

## HIS MIND GAMES

### MIND GAMES #1

A Dark And Steamy Paranormal Romance

Copyright © 2015 Rachel Dunning.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Cover Design, Copyright 2015 Rachel Dunning

Smashwords Edition.

ISBN: 9781311219824

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

## Table of Contents

CONTENT WARNING

PROLOGUE

~ Luke ~

PART ONE

~ Crystal ~

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

-5-

-6-

-7-

-8-

-9-

-10-

-11-

-12-

PART TWO

~ Crystal ~

-13-

-14-

-15-

-16-

-17-

-18-

-19-

-20-

-21-

BOOK II

# Get Free Books!

Sign up for my mailing list and get an email every time one of my books is released. Books are usually put up for free, or at heavily discounted prices when they are released. **You will NOT be spammed!**

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP NOW!

http://mailinglist.rdunning.com/

# CONTENT WARNING

This book contains explicit sexual content, violence and strong language. Only appropriate for readers aged 17 and older.

# PROLOGUE

# ~ Luke ~

The blackness of the dream was nothing compared to the reality it would bring. I didn't know that then. All I knew was the feel of her warm skin under my hand as I brought myself behind her, the sense of her moisture as I pushed inside her—the girl I had yet to meet. The girl who would turn my mind into a roiling mass of madness as I hunted the different worlds to find her.

I dreamed of her before I knew her. But it was no feathery dream of clouds and soft cushions in the sky. This was a dream of nightfall, of my lips between her thighs while she growled and hummed. A dream of red satin lace covered in fire. I dreamed of her hands through my hair, the arch of her back as she drove herself into me. I dreamed of her flavor, the feel of her heat as my tongue found her depths.

And those depths were filled with sin and lust and want.

She groaned as my hands explored the hillocks of her butt, over the three wide scars on her leg. I pushed her onto her stomach, grabbed her hips and drove myself into her deeply, feeling her squeeze down on me from inside as I fought to gain my control.

She pushed upwards against me, her butt an hourglass of heady madness, pulling me deeper.

My fingers drizzled over three more scars on her back, deep gashes of suffering that made her all the more beautiful. Electric fire sizzled on my fingertips as I touched them.

They glowed, the scars, blue and white and hot as I plumbed her depth.

She rocked into me, not letting me hold back, squeezing and swallowing me until all I could do...was burst.

My fingers dug deep into her hips, pushing bruises down on her soft skin. Her lightly colored hair swayed as I grabbed it between my fingers. Her own fingers clutched the silk sheets as I lost control, forgetting everything.

She shoved further upwards, pushing, fighting—and then she screamed.

Her head shot back as she pumped herself into me, the lines on her back glowing as the bliss ripped through her. She howled, like the wolves howl in the hills, moonlight shining into the room and over her skin as the insanity took over us.

I dreamed of her before I met her.

But it was no dream.

# PART ONE

# ~ Crystal ~

## -1-

I am a magnet for trouble.

So are all the others of my kind.

I grew up in foster homes. By the time I was seventeen I had been through eleven of them.

It all started with Raymond Southport. He was a prick. He was also my foster dad. He also masturbated in the bathroom while thinking of putting his fingers inside me.

I was thirteen.

No, he never actually touched me. But that's the problem. That's the problem with all of it. Because he did. In my head.

And I felt it.

I might have noticed it because I was hitting puberty. Or maybe it was because no one before had ever had such _impinging_ thoughts around me. (His thoughts were truly...intrusive.) Either way, I caught the first hints of my abilities at that young age.

I had been watering the lawn, having fun spraying this hosepipe up in a wide arc while Ray drank a beer on the porch, when I noticed him getting cozy around me. I felt hands on my body, but when I turned, there were no hands there. And no Ray. It was a bright day, very sunny, the flowers all strutting. I kept turning around, trying to find who was holding me, who was pushing me, who was... _undressing me_. I must have looked like a dog chasing its tale.

Ray was gone.

I felt his hands lower, lower, lower...

I fell to my knees on the ground.

I wept. I had no idea what was happening to me, no idea about sex or sexuality. No one had bothered to explain the birds and the bees to me yet. That's the problem when you have no parents and each home you go to is left wondering if you've had The Talk or not had The Talk. In short, no one ever gave me The Talk.

It happened the next day as well. And the next. I could actually _feel_ him on me. Trust me, touching was involved—whether it was "him" or some ghost, it didn't matter.

Of course, the third time it happened, I had cottoned on to the fact that Ray was actually doing it, he was always in my head when it occurred, and so I accused him.

It went nowhere. Of course not. I was adamant he'd "touched me," but when questioned more deeply, I did what any good girl does: I told the truth. The whole truth. And nothing but.

Big mistake.

After everyone was done staring at me in shock (except Ray, who simply fidgeted and broke into sweats) I was taken out of the Southports' home, reprimanded for telling lies, and labeled as delusional.

They didn't call it delusional as such. The crazy-manuals have a lot more fancy sounding names for it, seventy different names for the same thing so they have more opportunities to prescribe different drugs and raise the pharma stock prices. But delusional is pretty much what it came down to.

I came out of that knowing one thing: Telling the truth gets you nowhere.

I'm happy to say that I never lost my virginity until the ripe old age of seventeen, closer to eighteen.

Fortunately, Raymond seemed the exception to the rule. I never had any other foster fathers (or brothers) getting it on with me in my head. I did have a foster mother once who was fascinated with my breasts. She fondled them in her mind once at the dinner table and thought about how wonderful it would be to have firm tits like mine at her age (her words). _My, wouldn't Steve like that._ But I sensed her feely-feeliness was more of a curiosity than a sexual desire. Honestly, when it happened, I simply giggled.

I couldn't read minds. I didn't hear thoughts or words. But I got concepts and, in rare cases, if the emotion was powerful enough, I got the whole caboodle along with it—hands on my body, pressures against my skin. I would learn to control this later on, and would learn a few other tricks as well, but growing up was pretty rough.

## -2-

In all my foster-care years I only ever really loved one boy. His name was Tommy Halyarck. If I had known the man called Jack would kill him to get to me, would I have left Marfa so quickly? It's one of those questions that solves nothing even if answered.

Tommy Halyarck was a lanky guy with black hair and long arms. Not very good looking, not ugly either. He had a boyish face. He'd carry my books from school and we'd talk about Shakespeare or Jane Austen, or some Indie Rock band out of California that was rocking up the airwaves. He was an artist. A "good guy." And I loved him. He loved the sound of my name as well, Crystal Loradeen. My last name is the only thing I have left to remember my parents by. It's what started me and him talking initially. He was a bit of an intellectual, and helped me source the name as one of Gaelic origin.

He and I saw each other for six months. We'd only kissed in those six months, nothing more. It was an innocent love. We were mad for each other. Finally, after much discussion and embarrassment, checking if it's OK, and only if you're comfortable— _No, only if_ you're _comfortable? Are you comfortable? I am. You? Yes, if you are..._ —we decided to do the deed.

I don't know what other girls' first times are like. Mine was special. We made mistakes. He ejaculated early (before getting inside me, even). We laughed about it. He blushed. We waited a little bit, kissed. He told me he was so sorry and that he was so embarrassed. I didn't care, I loved him.

After twenty minutes, we tried again. It was nothing like the first time. It was electric. It was passionate.

There were fireworks, and the fireworks were inside of me. Five seconds lasted a lifetime. The moment of orgasm was exhilarating. I felt every quiver of his shaft as he burst inside me.

And then something happened.

I felt my mind flow out of me...

...and into him.

I became every nerve surrounding his shaft, the tip, the bottom, every twist and wild reach for my insides. I actually _was_ these things. I was the explosion, the high, the scream, the pain, the joy, the ecstasy.

I was his mind, his thoughts...

And that's when the pain began.

Time stopped. And we were locked in the moment of climax. Locked. It's not a pleasant feeling. I think orgasms are designed this way to result in maximum pleasure—the sour before the sweet. But being stuck in one—it's torture.

He was afraid. I had entered his mind too deeply, and he'd entered mine. I had felt impressions from his mind before, but never like this.

Tommy's mind felt trapped. He wanted to get out, but couldn't.

We left the world we were in, the bed, the sheets, the mattress...

... _and entered another one. Dark and stormy. A desert, mountains in the distance. Thunder, lightning. A cold breeze that is pleasant and soft..._

This was my prime ability, I would soon discover. The creation of worlds. Inner worlds which people can actually experience. Matter is different there. Energy is different. Sensations are different.

And time...is different.

It was the first time I was experiencing it as such. Prior to that I had only felt impressions from others, never actually _created_ a world within my mind that somebody could walk in. But I had grown accustomed to unusual occurrences with my mind for a long time, so the event caught me by no surprise.

I had no control of what we felt, of what was happening, but I relished in it.

Tommy didn't.

In my "inner" world, time follows different rules. Sometimes a moment can last forever when only seconds have passed in the real world. I didn't know it then, but I would soon. (Hell of a time to realize it, I know.)

Tommy was locked in, stuck, desperate to get out, desperate to gain control. And I was orgasming, exploding, dazed by the convulsions of my body and the shudder of my thighs. The pleasure was exquisite, but it had made me lose my senses.

In his mind, I heard him scream. And then I felt his pain— _his_ pain—down there, aching, as if someone had tied the electrodes of a car battery to his cock and was pumping juice through it, never ending, always tense, the agony never going away.

I was in two worlds at the same time.

Clouds formed in the inner world we were now sharing. His face was front and center in those clouds, lightning shafting all around him. And he screamed. Oh, gods, he screamed. He screamed for sweet mercy, begged for it to stop, to end. An ocean roiled and crashed against rocky crags which spiraled up so high they were dizzying.

In the "real" world, he only sweated, waited, grimaced ever so slightly.

A year went by in that inner world. It could have been a year of bliss, of orgasm after orgasm under the sun, in the water, under a waterfall.

But it was hell instead.

It would be the last night I ever saw Tommy.

After it was over, Tommy fell to my side, his face pale. "I feel ill," he said. "I feel.... That was weird. That was..."

_Weird._ It was a word I had come to know deeply.

He got up and ran to the bathroom, fell once. He had almost made it to the toilet bowl when the puke started its egress. He retched three or four times.

I sat up on the bed, naked, curled my arms around my knees. Rocked.

He retched again.

I sunk my head between my knees. _He doesn't know. He doesn't know what's happening, or what we experienced._

"I think I'm hallucinating, Crystal. I think..." _RETCH!_ "Oh, God... Maybe it's something I ate. Maybe..."

I got up off the bed, put some clothes on. I went to the bathroom, put my hand on his head. He flinched, pushed it away.

"Sor—sorry, Crystal, I don't mean to be an asshole."

No one ever told the truth when they gave me back to child services, because these are things no one talks about. These things "don't happen" in "modern society." But the reason I had been to eleven homes by this time, was because when I was around... _weird_ things would happen to people, to their heads. They'd get ideas, thoughts, crazy wild hallucinations. Sometimes cups would shake at the breakfast table (another out-of-control ability I had stumbled upon), a car's engine would smoke when I was angry, a lawnmower would pack up.

Worst of all, I'd be in their heads when these things occurred, unknowingly.

As I sat on the bathtub watching Tommy, a thought struck me that maybe I wasn't technically in their heads at all— _maybe_ _we were in an entirely different world._ An inner world created by the powers of my mind, and which received thought impressions from others, and put thought impressions _into_ others.

I had denied it up to this time. Call it a "puberty of magic" if you need a term for it. To me, it was simply my life.

But now, with Tommy gasping in the bathroom, me having felt every nerve of his being as it had been inside me, having felt _every_ pain and quiver of his—I knew about it. I finally understood.

Tommy kept his mouth shut, didn't admit to having joined into another world with someone he loved. Imagine it—imagine the possibilities. Two souls creating what they wanted. Heck, think of the _sex_ that could be had. But it was easier for him to think he was "hallucinating" because he "must have eaten something bad."

I waited there, in the motel bathroom, hoping, hoping, hoping he'd stop, take a step back. And ask me: _Crystal, did I imagine things or...did...something happen there?_

He never asked.

I saw the fear in his eyes. Saw the terror when he looked up at me. It's not that he didn't ask that bothers me. It's that he _knew_ and didn't ask. He didn't really believe he'd hallucinated. This was his mind rationalizing. But he _knew_. And, knowing, he now wanted nothing more to do with me. You didn't need to be a mind reader to figure that out. It was written all over his face— _Witch! Demon! Devil!_ There have been many labels for people like me in the past. None of them pretty. (It would only be after meeting Shira Naiman several months later that I'd start referring to myself proudly as a witch. No better term fits considering what we can do.)

There was no need for me to ask what he wanted. I'd seen it endlessly on the faces of others, every time they had sent me back to child services. No one ever said anything. And yet their faces said it all.

I saved Tommy the stress of opening his big mouth. I got up off the bathtub, put on my shoes, grabbed my purse. And I walked out.

The tears hemorrhaged behind my eyes as the door clicked shut. It was such a quiet click, so uneventful. But it felt like an atom bomb in the hallway.

I walked out of the motel, walked the dusty street away from it. We were twenty miles out of town. A small town. People would talk, so we had taken an out-of-the-way spot. After a mile or so, a mile of adrenaline, I stopped. Fell to my knees.

And I wept.

I wept miserably. I was only seventeen. I was heartbroken. I really did love him, but the truth of who I was and what I was made of, came to me like lightning. I wept for a half an hour. And then I walked. And wept. And walked. And wept.

Tommy pulled up in his dad's pickup next to me an hour later. He offered me a ride and I took it. Coyotes had been calling in the distance, and I knew I'd never make it home before sunrise. We drove without speaking. When we got to my place, all he said was: "I'm sorry, Crystal." He didn't explain any more.

_Because he knows. And he knows that I know_.

I got out of the truck. Said nothing in return.

I didn't go in the house. It was time to blow this joint. I wasn't gonna be in school the next day. I still loved him.

I took a can of gasoline, went to the trash cans out on the street, poured it over them. And then I lit the fuckers. There was a _whoosh_ of heat as the fire rose. I went in the house, grabbed some marshmallows, put em on a stick. And fried them. I then, very knowingly, with great care and certainty, _put the thought in my foster parents' heads that I was crazy_. _Absolutely freaking mental_. It was the first time I had actively tried to _squeeze_ into someone's mind, pushing through the cloud of their worries about work, cock-size, _Am I good enough in bed? Does he love me still?_ Before that, all experiences with other people on a mental level had been without forethought on my part, uncontrolled. But necessity is the mother of all invention.

I got in there, into their heads, through the black mass of their everyday problems.

She's...MAD!

They got the message.

Loud and clear.

I was out of there the next morning.

## -3-

Let's go back two years, very briefly:

There's a cheapo therapy program for kids "with issues" that they run in foster care. Not many kids get to avail themselves of it because the therapists they bring in are usually those that have been disbarred from the profession for sexual assault or something (this is my take on it), and there's so many kids that need help that social services only offers it to the truly _desperate_ cases.

When I was fifteen, I had been deemed a desperate case.

There was at least one guy who, according to them, wasn't a total bottom-of-the-barrel therapist. He was a bigshot name in the field of mental health, with lots of medical essays and observations about delinquent youth in the trade magazines and with his APA membership all up-to-date and paid for. He drove a big Lexus and wore only the best Pierre Cardin. He loved the pro bono stuff, of course, especially when accompanied by a nice entourage of photographers who would make the kids pose for him on their knees while he put his arm around them and smiled his wolfish smile.

The guy was a pervert.

Raymond had been Father of the Year compared to this dude. I only had one session with him, when I was fifteen. It would be the last session he ever gave anyone in foster care.

His hands were everywhere. _Everywhere._ I shuffled and writhed and moved.

"What are you thinking?" he asked me.

"It's not what I'm thinking. It's what _you're_ thinking, you sicko!" I replied.

"What do you think I'm thinking, hmmm?" he crooned.

I rolled my eyes at the fucker. "I can feel your fucking hands on my pussy—NOW BACK OFF!"

He fidgeted, held his thoughts back for a second. "You think I'm attracted to you?" And as he'd said _attracted_ , I felt his tongue between my legs.

I had gotten good at fighting people's thoughts off in the two years since Raymond (and would get better still), but some guys are just.... _persistent_.

Mentally, I couldn't deal with it yet, I couldn't keep him away in that session. It would be several years before I would meet Shira, who would teach me how to put walls up and stop this kind of shit from happening, but right now I had no clue that anyone else like me even existed.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

I stood up. Picked up a chair. And I _slammed_ it over his head. It cracked. He fell. He was out for a good two hours. I was reprimanded. Because I was so young I got away with a warning.

Suffice it to say, after setting fire to those trashcans two years later, I wasn't offered _any_ therapy.

I had somewhat of a reputation now. _Delinquent_ , you could call it. Truthfully, I was actually a pretty quiet girl. I kept to myself most of the time, spent my life in books. Reading is cool for me, because as the world takes shape on the page, I can actually _walk_ in it, _smell it_ , _taste it_. For _real_. It's about the only perk of being like me. So I read a lot. The only times when I had pulled a stunt like this, there had been a Raymond or a Tommy or a Dr. Pervert somewhere to set me off.

At seventeen, nearly an adult, I knew I wasn't going to be let off with a warning for the trashcan incident. And, honestly, I felt it was time to move on. Foster care and me were done.

I used my newfound skills to put thoughts into the heads of anyone at social services who saw me, to make them think they didn't see me. It was the first of many incidents where I saw myself change from a sweet little girl, to a more manipulative one. But when you're stuck in the middle of shit, you've got no time to think about how bad you stink. You just try and get out of it, using any means you can. And take the shower afterwards.

Within a few hours, I was on the road to Texas. I had run away, scrammed as far away as I could. Texas seemed like a good place to be. I caught a Greyhound and landed in a tiny town called Marfa that you've probably never heard of. Population: Two thousand. Nearest airport is two hundred miles away. It was just what I needed.

I got a job at the local watering hole there. There's only one. No one cares about ID. It's Texas, after all, although most of the population of Marfa comes from New York—Soho or Bushwick most likely (I kid you not). I needed a place to stay, and that's how I found the man who called himself Jack.

There were mixed opinions in the town as to whether or not this was his real name. He always said in his thick Southern drawl, "You can jus' call me Jack," and if you pushed him on it, he'd smile his disarming smile and say, "Well, honey, are any of us who we say we are?" and then he'd give a laugh that would leave everyone wondering.

Everybody in Marfa knew Jack. _Everybody_. He was the guy who had always been there, who never said no to a neighbor coming by for a cup of sugar (which didn't happen often because Jack and his wife lived way on the outskirts of town). Jack had been there longer than the oldest person there could remember. But memories of him were vague, they'd get confused when asked about it, and would lose their train of thought. "Why, he's always just been here, is all," they'd say.

Jack was a lanky man who looked to be in his late fifties. He liked his cowboy boots and his Stetson hats. His shirt was often undone at the top and he had leathery skin, the type of skin that looks like it's had ten-too-many years in the desert sun. He had an alligator tooth fixed to a string of leather around his neck, the tooth nestled comfortably under the curls of white hair that his chest sported. In the front of his mouth he had a gold tooth, which I wonder now if it wasn't the reason he liked smiling so much. His was a vacant smile, neither welcoming nor threatening. The kind of smile you expect from someone who minds his own business and lets you mind yours.

But his eyes were something else. They were black, completely black. Just as the memories of him in people's heads seemed vague, so would the memories of his eye color evade you unless you took a good solid look at the guy. When I first saw him, I thought his eyes had been a piercing blue, then green, then I was pretty sure they were brown. But when I would leave town for good later, I remembered them for what they were. They were black as basalt, black as cinders.

In the many months I stayed with him and his wife, I never got any weird vibes from Jack to make me doubt him. I'll go so far as to say that I even trusted the man. He had a "quiet" mind, and perhaps it should have alerted my spidey-sense that he did. But I had been so sick of hearing (and worse, _feeling_ ) people's thoughts and desires that, to be around such calmness was a breath of fresh air.

His wife Sirvana was different, however. She never liked me from the day I arrived. Her hate for me was almost palpable, but Jack set my mind at ease by telling me "that's how she is with everyone, darlin. Don't pay no mind to it."

He and his wife ran a rooming house on the outside of town. They gave me room and board in exchange for some work around the house and a meager monthly rent. I also got to use the car, an old beat-up truck they kept out front.

Sirvana Taikichec was at best cold to me. She was an old woman with thinning hair and a tiny figure. She had bony fingers and her clothes hung off her like she hadn't eaten for years. Her eyes were a dull green. But she kept quiet and made food and cleaned the house and mostly stayed out of my way.

She was into Tarot cards and dreamcatchers. The old house had a number of them floating around. It seemed everywhere I turned there was a circle of webbing with feathers floating around looking at me. She had a tattoo on the inside of her left forearm, old and faded. It was an inscription I never managed to read.

Jack recognized my powers, of course. Only I didn't know it at the time. I'd have conversations with him in my mind, long conversations that would last for hours. In the real world, he'd find me sitting in the reading room, rocking on a chair, just looking up at the ceiling and saying nothing. And he'd leave me there. But in my head, he and I would be at a river, throwing stones into the water, watching them plonk downwards or occasionally skid over onto the other side. I had no idea he experienced these conversations as well. I only assumed I had brought an image of him into my inner world because I liked him.

After the incident with Tommy, I had grown wise to this inner world I lived and breathed in. I knew from that night that it _was_ possible for others to experience this world, but never dreamed it could occur without a union such as me and Tommy had had (i.e. sex). It turns out I had been creating these inner worlds my entire life, and only became aware of it as I grew older. Again: A sort of "witch puberty," I suppose. Unbeknownst to me I had constructed entire cities inside of me, cities I walked and traveled in when outwardly it seemed I was only staring at the stars.

Forests, lagoons, populated realms of splendor and wonder.

I had done this unawares, but now, cognizant of my new powers, I began creating these inner worlds actively, working on them, thinking up things and they would all appear.

I guess "normal" people call it imagination. But it's _so_ much more than that.

It was in Marfa that I met Roxy Waldbaum, a girl from New York. She volunteered at the library (where I spent the majority of my free time). She never told me she was "one of us" because she didn't know herself. But the books she recommended to me were always inclined in the direction of what I was feeling, and what I needed to know, as if she were sensing my needs through some unspoken channel that only she and I felt. I must have read more books on the occult in Marfa than have been published in the last twenty years.

Rearview mirrors. If I had known then what I know now, known what Shira would teach me later, I would have understood the form and structure of my and Roxy's channel, and helped Roxy find her way back to her powers. But just as I had been creating inner worlds all my life and not known it, so had I been exercising other powers and been unaware of them too.

Nothing in my life has been a coincidence.

Jack is a demon. I know it's a little jolting to just out and say it like that, but I think you need to know it from the start. I had no clue at the time— _no_ clue—that such a thing could even exist. Life's the best teacher. And as far as witches go, the _only_ teacher.

I actually loved my time in Marfa. I made a few friends, mostly the artsy crowd Roxy hung out with. But I was a recluse. Old habits die hard. I had grown up in my head and I knew my inner worlds better than the real world. So that's where I stayed, reading my books and living in a dream most of the time.

And there was Jack always. Always. _Always._

I wondered about it again after a while, wondered if he was aware of the conversations I was having with him in my mind, and also in my dreams. I mean dreams in the literal sense, the kinds you get when you sleep.

I had this spot I would run to since I had been a kid. It was a small lake, barely bigger than a pool, with a waterfall and butterflies and the smells of nature. I ran there every time I was afraid of something. I think it started happening after Ray, but I'm not sure. It was my own secret location where no one could touch me or hurt me.

The first time Jack arrived in there, I was shocked. " _Don't be alarmed_ ," he said in the inner world. _"This isn't really me. It's an imagination of me that you're creating."_

" _But you're here, at my pool. And if I'm imagining you, I wouldn't let you in here particularly. Maybe in another of my worlds, yes. But this one is...special."_

" _A-course you'd let me in here. You'd only let people you trust in here."_

" _Are you really here, Jack? Are you? Are you...a witch?"_

He laughed, a rumble of a laugh that was warm and friendly—like Santa Clause. _"I wish. I'm not like you. You know that, don't you?"_

I'm not like you. He was being completely honest.

" _How did you find me?"_

" _You brought me here."_

I patted the seat next to me in the inner world. And he sat. He would sit there from thereon out, _every_ day.

And we'd talk.

## -4-

I wasn't interested in boys.

My heart still hurt from my experience with Tommy, and often I'd find a quiet place in the real world and just look out into the desert and think about him. A tear would break out every now and then. I know it's dumb, but that's how it goes when you're seventeen.

I was hit on in Marfa. I was hit on plenty. You can't be a barmaid that looks like me and not get hit on. I'm far from bombshell. But I'm not a dog either. I have very light brown hair that some people mistake for blond. Green eyes. I also didn't have the physical scars then that I do now, but those are on my back and my left leg so even if I had, they would have been covered by the jeans and tee I wore to work every night.

It took a little while to gain the respect of the patrons. On my first night, a guy called Brandon-Lee asked, "Who's the blondie?"

As I said, I'm not blond. But I was blond enough, I guess. Brandon-Lee was a good-looking character, and if I had been interested, I might have played the part. He was rugged and manly.

Old Man Billy ran the bar (probably still does). He's a cool cat. He's missing about half his teeth and sports a cowboy hat every hour of the day. People had been saying for years he was about to kick the bucket but he just kept on coming to work, staying up until two or three in the morning, hale and healthy. He's good with the ladies, too. Must be that old-man charm he's got. Many a time I saw one of the newcomers from the East cuddling up to him and sitting on his lap while he bought them a welcome beer. (Only _one_. Every newcomer gets _one_ free beer, he used to say. Then they pay like everyone else.) The only "girl" I ever saw Old Man take home was Mary-Sue. She was easily late forties, but a gal fresh out of high school when compared to his age. They never outed their relationship, and never kissed in public (although she hugged him a lot), but it was common knowledge in the small town that they were hitting it off.

Old Man Billy kept a loaded shotgun behind the bar. "In fitty years I ain nevva had necessity-a usin her," he said to Brandon-Lee after his comment to me. "But by golly, you say one more thing about this here young lady and I'll blow yer fuckin nose off that smug face-a yours, Brandon-Lee." Old Man had the shotgun pressed up against Brandon-Lee's nose. And Brandon-Lee lost all color.

"I—I—I'm sorry, Bill," he said. "I—" Brandon-Lee looked over at me, smiled sheepishly, apologized.

"No problem," I said, feeling a little embarrassed at the sudden attention.

But Brandon-Lee did keep hitting on me, albeit a little more smoothly. He had light brown eyes, a dashing smile. And he had the hard body of a guy who works on a farm.

What can I say? I wasn't interested. I just wanted to be by myself and find out who I was. Or... _what_ I was.

Brandon-Lee finally hooked up with Charlie (short for Charleen) Hendrik. And he was very obvious about it indeed, grinding his cock against her while they danced with beers in their hand and the local band played a country song I didn't recognize. Maybe he was trying to make me jealous. Actually, I was happy for him.

There were others as well. My quiet-time started being interrupted with guys learning that I would often be found at the library or the local bookstore. I even had Rhett Parker ride out to my secret spot in the desert just to see if he could score with me in the blazing sunlight. He was less charming than Brandon-Lee. _Much_ less, and I wanted to ram my knee up his crotch (or put a shotgun to _his_ nose) as he started touching my leg suddenly. I mean _really_ touching my leg. I told him I wasn't interested, and he got a little rough.

And then there were Rhett's _thoughts_.

I was more sexually mature to be ready to receive those kinds of thoughts, and through experience I had managed to firm my mind up against feeling actual _hands_ and _fingers_ on myself, but the impressions were still there. The images still imposed themselves on my mind so that I knew precisely every position a persistent guy wanted to have me in when he first started hitting me.

It's a real romance killer, let me tell you. Since having grown more sexually active, I can tell you that I'm no prude in bed... _with a guy I love_. But getting these impressions from a guy I barely knew—it sucked.

I was almost ready to leave town after the incident.

I wanted to run. But where? Go live out by myself with no one to talk to and nothing but the worlds I create in my mind to keep me company? It wasn't an option.

I stormed into the library to return the book I'd been reading, and Roxy caught me by the arm. As soon as she touched me...everything calmed down. "You OK?" she asked.

"Uhm...yeah...yeah...just... Urgh. Guys."

"Wanna talk about it?"

Roxy was very beautiful. She always wore simple clothes and kept her black hair tied back in a ponytail. But she had incredible features. If they were made up...

"No, I'm fine," I said. I felt calmer and calmer the longer she stood there. "You're making me feel better."

She looked my age more or less, maybe a little older. _A runaway like me?_ "You must get hit on a lot," I said, noticing she had the kinds of breasts men probably go nuts over. She wasn't D-cup, but she was larger than me.

I looked away, embarrassed at what I was thinking. "Sometimes," she said. "You get used to it. Most guys around here are OK."

"Even Rhett Parker?"

She rolled her eyes. " _He_ hit on you? No wonder you're a wreck. He's the pushiest of them all, especially since he broke up with Marge. But he's harmless."

"He caught me out in the desert. Didn't feel so harmless to me."

She laughed. "Well, he is. And if he isn't, just kick him in the nuts. That usually lets him know you're not interested. Some guys just take a little more convincing."

I laughed, feeling closer to the girl.

When she let go of my arm, a small doubt of fear entered my mind. "Well," she said, "I gotta get back to work. Stick it out. You'll be fine."

As she turned to walk away (making me jealous at how good her ass looked), I said, "Hey, uhm...it's Roxy, right?"

"Yeah."

"You wanna...grab a coffee sometime...or something?"

She hesitated for a second, and I felt her discomfort.

"It's fine," I said. "Only if you have time."

She frowned just slightly, as if thinking on something very deeply. I turned to go, but she stopped me by saying, "Uhm, no, yeah, sure. Sure, I'd love...to grab a coffee. I don't know what went over me there. Felt a little light-headed for a second. Must be the sun."

Roxy and I became relatively close friends, as close as can be for an introvert like me. And my trips to the library became more frequent. She always grew cold when I mentioned Jack, but when I pressed her on it, she never said anything about him. I tried to feel her mind, but it was a complete blank on the subject, so I had no reason to doubt her truthfulness.

Roxy didn't remember that she had once stayed with Jack, of course. She had stayed with him for two weeks only, as had all the witches he had ever taken in. Except for his wife.

And except for me.

## -5-

It was that night that I started dreaming of the man who'd get me interested in boys again. Only, it was no dream...

... _I'm shocked when he appears. I was expecting Jack. He meets me here every night, by the lake with the falling water._ My _lake. My quiet place, my place of retreat._

The man stands on the other side of the water. But there is fog surrounding him completely.

I find myself covering my breasts, even though I'm clothed in a light slip.

" _Who are you?" I cry, and the words echo as if they were in a cave._

_I only know he is a man because I_ sense _it, sense his eyes—hot, wonderful eyes that burn over my legs and stomach. But his face and his body are covered by the shroud of fog._

The man says nothing.

" _Who are you?" I repeat. I feel myself shivering. I shouldn't feel like this, because this is_ my _world and everything that appears here is of my creation. So if I brought him here, why should I fear him?_

I consider asking again, but decide not to.

I must leave _, I think._ I don't know what's happening, or why he's here, but I must leave.

My effort to get up is stopped by commanding words.

" _Don't." The words boom from across the water as if spoken by a god. "Stay."_

_Although I cannot yet see him, inexplicable flashes of heat hit me, flashes I don't reject._ Why don't I reject them? _I wonder._ Why am I not rejecting the thoughts he's engendering in me, his hands on my thighs as he pushes toward...

" _Oh," I mutter, unaware that I'm speaking out loud._ I'm not rejecting the thoughts...because the thoughts _are mine_ , not his.

I sit. Waiting.

" _Well?"_

" _You must leave here," he says. "You are in danger."_

Huh? _"Do you care to explain?" I say._

" _I don't know the reason, only that I was called."_

The fog begins to clear, wisps of whiteness fading away from him like clouds from a moon.

I'm...stunned...when I see...that he's wearing nothing.

And that it arouses me. Terribly.

Ahhh _, I realize_ , it's one of _those_ dreams.

" _You're naked," I utter foolishly. But hey, it's my dream, so I can be foolish in here._

His body is a statue of power, blue patterns and lines of strength down both his arms. Even from here I can see his eyes. Angry, blue as cold water. And short hair a light brown, only slightly darker than mine. He looks a little like a gladiator. Early twenties, perhaps.

The sensations inside me are...overwhelming. The tightness in my stomach, the heat on my skin.

I heave in a deep breath, looking at the water and knowing it would cool me down.

" _I'm naked because this is_ your _dream, isn't it?" he says, no hint of derision in the statement at all. "I appear as_ you _want to see me."_

I have no answer to that.

" _Crystal," he says._

" _How do you know my name?"_ Because this is your dream, idiot, _I reprimand myself._

But I know, deep down I know, it isn't.

" _I know yours just as you know mine," he says._

Luke _. The name comes to me with ease, as if I've known him an eternity. "Luke," I say. "Short for Lucien. Lucien Dresner."_

He frowns.

" _I was wrong?" I ask._

" _No, no... On the contrary..." For the first time I notice his confidence break into a smattering of doubt. And then the doubt is gone as instantly as it appeared._

" _Luke. My name is Luke. Just Luke."_

My eyes drift sinfully down between his legs, and the flash that hits me is both confusing and maddening—the thought of how I would like to be kneeling between those legs right now, feeling his hands running vigorously through my hair as I hear him groan, as I feel him clutch against my head and pull me into—

Stop!

Definitely one of _those_ dreams.

I look away. "Please put some clothes on," I say.

_When I look at him again, he's in jocks._ Just as I commanded. _But his bulge is still distracting me. "More," I say, waving my hand at his crotch, looking away. When I return my gaze, he's in shorts._

" _Better?" he says._

No _. "Yes."_

" _Where is the demon?" he asks._

" _The what?"_

" _The demon. You called me. And I am here. Where is the demon? You don't...seem...to be in danger." He looks confused._

And here I thought this was one of those kinds of dreams. Obviously not.

" _I_ didn't _call you, and there is no demon here," I say. "Only me and you."_

He examines me closely. Too closely. I feel his eyes under my slip as if they were hands. But I relish the touch somehow. It calls me, draws me like iron filings to a magnet.

" _Why am I here?" he asks._

" _You're kidding me, right?"_

" _I don't_ kid _."_

" _Well, excuse me."_

He looks around militantly, taps his hip as if looking for a weapon, finds nothing. "This is most...unusual."

_I start to smile, eying his hard six pack, hoping it_ will _become one of those dreams._

" _You don't_ need _me then?" he asks, still perplexed._

I figure, hell, it's a dream, why not get cheesy: "Need? That depends..."

_He heaves in a deep breath, looks at the center of my legs. I'm covered by the slip, but I feel his eyes underneath it, relishing me._ Hell, my kind of dream. I haven't had one of these in ages.

He takes a step forward. My breasts fill up. There's only a small pool of water between us, a measly pool that we could slide into together...

" _No," he says abruptly. I notice he's grown below. He wants me, too. "This isn't the way it's supposed to go. He turns, disappears into thin air._

" _What the fuck?" I sputter._

But he's gone, swallowed by nothing.

The next voice I hear sends my heart leaping. "Say sumthin, darlin?"

My stomach clenches into a ball. I turn left. "Jack," I blurt out. "J—Jack."

" _Yes? Everything alright, honey?" He looks out over the water._

" _Uh, yeah, sure, sure."_

He cocks an eyebrow. "Really?"

_There's suspicion in his tone._ _"Yeah, of course. Come here. I'm glad to see you." I give him a hug, the first one I've ever given him in this world._ My _world. "Jack," I ask hesitantly. "This is a dream, right? I mean, you don't remember any of this when you wake up, do you?" It's a question I keep asking him in here, but I'm never satisfied with the answer._

He looks out across the small lake, holding me by the elbow.

His eyes narrow.

His grip tightens.

" _Course not, honey. This is all..._ in your head _. Why, if it wasn't, it would be rather..._ weird _. Wouldn't you say?"_

In your head.

Weird.

## -6-

The dream got me thinking in the morning.

Maybe I _was_ crazy. Just freaking crazy. Maybe all of this _was_ in my head. Maybe none of this stuff had ever happened to me. And the smoking engines and falling coffee cups every time I got angry when I was growing up? Coincidence. Just coincidence.

Was it a subconscious thought telling me to leave? Was the man called Lucien simply an embodiment of an inner perception that I'd had. I ransacked my mind for any signs of danger. There had been Rhett, but that had been harmless enough. Sirvana wasn't the kindest of creatures, but she never got in my way.

I found myself thinking of my parents for the first time in a long time.

They died when I was five. Both of them. Drove straight into an oncoming truck. I have no other family. No brothers and sisters. No aunts. No uncles. No grandparents.

I've always followed a _sense_ in my life. Nothing has been a coincidence. And I didn't feel the urge to leave Marfa at all. But if I did, where would I go? I'd be eighteen soon. Technically an adult. No high school diploma. No college degree.

I liked the bar. I liked the people there. Aside from Roxy I hadn't made any close friends but I was OK with that. It was quiet here.

_It's all in your head_.

I did dream of Luke again, but these were all _those_ kinds of dreams, and none of them very clear. The images were ragged, disjointed, like flipping TV channels and landing on a sex scene in _Game of Thrones_ and then flipping it again onto a shopping network.

But his aura began to fill my mind both day and night. And not in a wistful way; it was in an erotic, terrifying way. Every time I dreamed of him I would taste his sweat on my tongue, feel the slickness of our bodies against each other as he rode into me violently from behind, below. I'd be holding him, grappling around the massiveness of his arms and chest. My hands would slide over an oiled body. There'd be groans and moans and a banging bed.

I never reached climax in the dreams. But I'd wake up in a frenzy, and more often than not I'd slide my hand down in this half-dream-half-awake state and push myself over the edge in a moment of desperation.

The dreams with Jack became less. But they were still there, always there. At least one or two a week. And our conversations in my mind remained, always pleasant, always calm. There was nothing in them to lead me to believe that (one) he was _really_ in my head having a conversation with me, or (two) that he meant me any harm. Instead, I always felt calmer, understood, cared for when Jack spoke to me in the inner worlds of my mind.

Luke never warned me about any dangers again. But in the times I "saw" him we did little talking. And yet, every time he entered my dreams, I felt the warning in every part of him. A terrible urge that something was going to go wrong, so horribly wrong.

It did.

Three months later, a total of six months since I had landed in Marfa.

## -7-

I walked in on an argument between Jack and Sirvana after getting home from the bar. It was three AM. I could hear them from downstairs. They were in their bedroom upstairs, screaming and howling. I was about to walk up to my room and shut my door when I heard something that gave me pause.

"She's been here half a _year_. Get rid of her!" Sirvana shouted.

"I'll get rid of her when I'm goddamn good and ready."

"None of the others have lasted this long. _None._ You want her to replace me, don't you? That's why you keep her around."

"Oh, Sirvy-honey, you are _irreplaceable_. _Nobody_ could be as fucking _dense_ as you are."

"You do want her. Well— _take_ her. Take her to the damn warehouse and just be done with it."

"You foolish hag. You _know_ they have to come by choice."

"Then _let her go_. None of the others took this long."

Take me to a warehouse?

I started getting visions of a CNN special report— _TEENAGER SLAUGHTERED AND FED TO PIGS AT LOCAL WAREHOUSE_.

It was time for me to leave. Being hit on by Rhett Parker in the desert had been one thing. This was entirely another.

And then I heard the _slap!_ And a crash, furniture falling over. "You pig. You... _demon._ " _SLAP!_ "I am your _wife._ "

"You are a goddamn _hag._ A hasbeen. You'd be nothing without me. Nothing, woman." _SLAP! CRASH!_

I ran to my room and started packing a bag furiously.

"Just take her. Take the _witch._ "

Witch.

I paused. I hadn't started calling myself this yet, but what else was I?

They know.

And how did I miss it?

I heard a another _slap!_ behind their bedroom door. "Enough!" Sirvana cried. "Enough!"

Slap!

"Has it occurred to you, woman, that maybe I don't _want_ to take her? Has it?"

"You're weak. _Weak._ "

_Slap! Crash!_ Sounded like her hitting a mirror.

Staying the night was no option. I thought of Roxy. She had a massive studio apartment that she used for art.

I grabbed my life's savings from under the mattress and skedaddled down the stairs. I had never opened a bank account for fear of being hunted down by child services, and had just never bothered to after turning eighteen. Old habits.

There was violence breaking out in the room. Sirvana started to scream. _He's going to kill her._

I stopped at the bottom of the steps. _CRASH!_ "Stop, stop! You're hurting me," she howled.

I took another step forward.

"STOP HITTING ME."

" _Fuck_ ," I mumbled. "Fuck fuck fuck."

I dumped my duffel bag on the ground, started walking up. I needed something to hit him with. I was sure he kept a gun around the house, maybe more than one, but I had no idea where it was. I saw a vase and grabbed it. It was all I could find.

SLAP! CRASH!

I walked to their bedroom. "YOU STINKING"— _slap!_ —"GODDAM—"

I knocked.

The fury stopped abruptly.

Silence—except for the bass drum of my heart.

When Sirvana opened the door, I almost fell over with fright.

She was a mass of blood and blueness, lips swollen, eyes swollen, one of them bleeding. She saw the vase in my hand and smirked as best she could with her disfigured face. "Oh, honey," she said condescendingly. "That's sweet. Not even a bullet could stop this man. Several have tried. But it's sweet." Then she spat at my feet, a fat glob of red and yellow goo which landed on my sneakers. _Talk about gratitude._ "You can have him, _witch._ " She slammed the vase out my hands so that it splattered into pieces against the wall.

And then she stormed off.

I was so stunned watching her pace away, that I'd almost forgotten about Jack. But Jack doesn't let himself be forgotten.

"I'm sorry you had to witness that," he said in a smooth voice. _He sounds just like when he's in my head_. "I—I—I—"

His voice was velvet, and I felt the tension in my body ease...

... _It's OK, Crystal. Nuthin ta worry about. OK. It's OK. What you heard... Don't worry. She's delusional, going senile a little. But I love her. I love her with allll my heart, honey. Now you go on to your room there, honey. Go on. It's fine. It's fine. Don't protest. It's fine. Fine. Smooth. Cool. Fiiiiiiiine. All's OK, baby. All's OK..._

I was suddenly confused, struck by a delirious amnesia, wondering how the vase had been smashed. Jack gave me his most disarming grin. _Such lovely blue eyes_ , I thought. _Blue? Hmm. I've never noticed that._

"You go on over to bed, honey. It'll be fine."

I did.

Like a zombie.

I felt tired, so tremendously tired and drained. _And have I been feeling this way for the last six months? Is it the work? The late nights?_

I got to my bedroom, closed the door. Locked it. I didn't know why I locked it. I just did.

I slid under the covers.

So drowsy, so drowsy. Late night. Lots of people at the bar. I smell like beer. Drowsy. Drowsy...

I heard footfalls on the wooden floor outside. _Boomp, boomp, boomp, boomp_. Stop.

He was outside my door.

The doorknob twitched _just_ a fraction of an inch. Then moved back.

But it's OK, it's only Jack. Good Jack. Quiet Jack. Friendly Jack.

His boots hit the wooden floor again as he walked away. _Boomp, boomp, boomp, boomp_.

Within seconds, I was asleep...

..."You're here again," I say to the warrior sitting by the small lake. Luke. He's shirtless, wearing cargo shorts, every muscle on his back a mass of snakes fighting for position. And he's sharpening a sword.

" _I'm here when you call, you should know that by now. Where is the demon?" He looks around the idyllic scene._

" _Demon? There is no demon here, just as there wasn't last time."_

He turns his head to face me behind him. At first there is anger in his eyes, but it fades quickly. Disappointment, maybe?

_His eyes slide down my body._ Such alarming eyes, blue as the Maldives _. "Unusual," he says._

I feel self-conscious, find myself bringing my hands over my crotch even though I'm clothed in a light orange belt-dress. "Gee, thanks."

" _Not you," he says. "I didn't mean it like that." He shakes his head, looks out over the lake again. Sharpens his sword._

" _Nice getup," I tell him, inching forward._

He runs a whetstone across the long blade. Swish, swish, swish. "You prefer me naked?"

Yes _. "No."_

" _We appear in the form that makes us most amenable to who we serve."_

" _And that was...naked...last time?"_

" _Seems like it."_

Swish, swish, swish.

I want him. This lust is...terrible, so unlike me. But it's a dream, of course. _The scent of fresh dew on the grass doesn't help, that aroma of spring, of birth. Of fertility._

" _You must leave here," he says. He turns his head, and I understand he wants me to sit next to him, which I do. "You must go. That you've called me twice to this same location only forebodes of evil."_

His accent is American, but his language is ancient.

" _I didn't call you," I say stubbornly._

He frowns at me. "You really don't know what you are, do you?"

"What _I am? Not_ who? _"_

His eyes narrow, taking in every part of me. His jaw is firm and chiseled, every muscle on his body defined. But he's younger than I had first thought, perhaps twenty? Twenty-two?

" _Yes,_ what _," he says._

_I look out over the pool, listen to the rush of water falling down from the rocks on our left. "And what are_ you _?" I retort._

" _What? Not who?"_

" _Ha ha, funny. Yes—_ what? _"_

He sighs, bringing air into his massive chest. "Does it matter?"

" _Yes."_

" _I'm a part of your mind, nothing more."_

My heart sinks at hearing it, because I want him to be real, completely real. "Why are you here?"

" _Must we go around in circles? What were you doing before you went to sleep?"_

What was I doing? I...I... Hmmm. "I don't...know."

" _You don't know?" His tone is almost angry._

" _I was...at home...I guess. Or was I?"_

He puts his hand on my bare knee, and I'm thrown into a dream within a dream...

...of him entering me, holding me under his massive weight, twirling my hair...

" _You_ must _remember," he says._

" _Why?"_

_And then he gets angry: "Because you are a_ witch _, damnit! And I am a hunter. And the only reason I even exist is to protect people like you."_

_The world starts to spin._ And he's so _fucking_ attractive when he gets mad. _"A witch," I say, no belief in my voice. It just sounds different to have someone call me it so unequivocally._

" _You don't even_ know? _This is most...unusual."_

" _You've said that before."_

He stands, sword in massive hand. There's a bright ruby in the pommel, delicate filigree swirling its handle.

" _Protect," I say, a little peeved, "like some damsel in distress." I stand as well. "I'm no fucking damsel,_ hunter _."_

" _Oh, that's rich. That is fucking rich. You call_ me _here and then blame me for arriving. We don't just freaking_ appear _, woman. We are_ called _!"_

Woman.

Woman?

I slap him.

My hand stings suddenly from the impact and he puts his own hand to his red cheek. When he looks up at me again, I'm afraid.

_Before I know it he's got his hands clutched to my wrists, driving me back, back, back—_ slam _against a tree. His lips are inches from mine, every pore in his body radiating heat and making me...yearn. Our chests are heaving, our eyes locked in a stare of fury—_

And then I kiss him.

_I taste him and feel his breath inside me like that of a dragon, a warlord, a_ god _. He keeps holding me down, his grip ever tightening, and I love it. I love it. I feel my pelvis moving toward him, sense the need in him like a tornado forming._

The kiss is deadly, everything fading, everything disappearing. Memories swirling around my head, flickering TV images of me and this...hunter, at night, how I woke up touching myself in Marfa, wanting him, lusting for the feel of his rough tongue—

Marfa.

Wait.

Jack.

Oh, fuck. The vase. Sirvana. The threat of a warehouse.

My sudden recollection causes me to forget the blissful kiss and...mistakenly close my mouth and bite Luke's tongue.

" _Ouch, woman!"_

_If I wasn't so turned on by him now, I'd slap him again for referring to me as_ woman _. Again._

He lets go of my left wrist and brings his hand to his tongue, a droplet of blood seeping out of it.

" _Sorry," I say, a little embarrassed._

He looks at me angrily, turns away abruptly, leaving me pinned against the tree, untethered and alone.

With his back to me, he says, "No. No. I—I'm the one who's sorry. I should never have done that. But all of it is unusual."

I'm still trying to catch my breath, heaving against the tree.

" _And on the other nights," he says, "when you and I..." He stops._

Oh shit. _"The other nights?"_

He turns to face me. It's a dangerous move, because every part of him calls me. I do my best to stay up against the tree and not rush against him and throw him to the ground and take him in a moment of delirium.

" _The other nights," he says. "When I...thought of you. You must understand, Crystal, I live two lives. This one, and the one out there, in the real world. I never meant to...think...about you out there. But I did. And I'm sorry, it was not in calling with my duty."_

" _Think...about me?"_

_He sighs, looks a little embarrassed. "Yes,_ think _. Should I elucidate?"_

" _Please do."_

_He looks at his sword on the ground, looks up at me. "_ Think _. As men sometimes do, you know..." He swallows. "Gods. Yes—_ think _. I_ thought _about you, OK? I thought about you in certain...ways. And... I didn't know, OK? Out there, I'm not aware of any of this. Out there you're just a dream, gone in the morning. But I never expected... I never expected that you'd_ feel _my thoughts."_

" _You masturbated while thinking of me."_

" _Mothers of gods." He looks away, blushing._

I like the sudden power I have over him. And I feel myself swell as I ponder it. "That's kind of 'my thing,'" I say. "Feeling people's thoughts. Although...it's never happened in a dream."

" _Can we change the subject now? I apologize, OK? I never imagined it was possible that you'd..._ feel _what I was thinking. Hell, out there you don't even exist to me."_

No, don't apologize. Definitely not. _"It's fine," I say. "What do you mean you live two lives?"_

" _Crystal, for the love of gods, now is not the time to explain. If I am here, then you called me."_

The memory. "There was a fight with my landlord today. They were talking of taking me to a warehouse. I had forgotten completely about it." The sudden recollection of it again weakens my knees.

Luke frowns. "What is the landlord's name?"

" _Calls himself Jack. Wife is called Sirvana."_

_Luke's tanned skin goes almost pale, his mouth suddenly slack. "This is worse than I thought." He reaches down and grabs his sword. "You must run. You must go. You_ must _leave now." He looks around frantically._

" _I was planning on it, but then...he got into my head...and I forgot. I...forgot."_

" _He's drained you enough. That's their MO. But if you're still here, he probably needs to wait a few more days."_

" _Whose MO?"_

" _Demons."_

" _Demons. Like little red guys with wings?"_

" _No, more like Texans with Stetsons in this case."_

I swallow hard. "He's not here," I say. "So you can stop looking around for him."

" _Tell me of this warehouse. Is it an actual warehouse? A warehouse in the dreamworld?"_

I shrug, push off the tree. "I...don't know. It was the first time I heard of it."

He tightens his grip on his sword.

" _How did I call you, Lucien? How did—"_

" _Don't call me Lucien."_

" _But it's your name."_

" _In ten years no witch in here has ever known my actual name. It's—"_

"— _unusual," I finish for him._

" _Yes."_

" _I didn't call for you, Lucien. I really didn't. I mean..."_

" _You did call me." He taps his head. "In here. In time you'll understand, Crystal. But now is not the time. You need to wake up, and you need to_ leave _while you can. If he's making you lose your memory, your powers are almost completely drained. I'm surprised you're not on a slab already with four demons around you having their way with you while they cut your body up into little pieces. But it gives us time. It saves me a bloody battle where I'd probably lose anyway. You can simply wake up and move on. He won't take you tonight."_

Fuck _. "Why didn't you tell me earlier? I mean, you could have at least mentioned something about demons."_

" _I did, if I recall. You said there were none around. Look, I follow my duty in this world. Nothing more, nothing less."_

" _And who defines your duty?"_

" _You do."_

Oh.

" _Wake up, Crystal. It's your only hope against the one who calls himself Jack. He's...a little tougher than the others. How long have you been with him, ten days? Twelve?"_

" _Huh?" Time is different in dreams. Clearly he has no idea how much time has passed in real life._

" _How long have you been staying with him? For him to have drained you so much, it must be close to the two-week limit. That's his MO. Faster than other demons."_

Two weeks. "Uhm, six—six months?"

Luke says nothing; his jaw goes slack.

" _Luke?"_

" _Yeah."_

" _You're staring."_

His grip slackens on the sword as if from shock. "Six...months! This is so...un— Never mind. You need to wake up. It's your only hope. Six months or two weeks—it doesn't matter. The time is nigh. A few more days and you'll be defenseless."

I look at his sword. "You couldn't have brought a bazooka?"

He eyes his sword proudly, brings it up and looks at the blade. "No, this does just fine." He smiles, then goes serious again. "But Jack is different. You need to wake up and go."

" _How do I do that? Wake up."_

_He stares at me blankly. "Hell,_ you're _the witch. I just do what you command." He looks at my legs, then looks away abruptly._

" _Is that why you kissed me in here? Because I...commanded you?"_

" _No. That was different. That was..." He doesn't need to say_ unusual _for me to get it. "I_ chose _to kiss you. I...chose."_

_His use of the word_ chose _connotes a much more profound meaning that I don't quite apprehend._

" _I didn't mind...your thoughts," I say. As with everything else, it doesn't sound weird at all to say this in a dream. Maybe I don't need to wake up. Maybe I just need to change it to one of_ those _kinds of dreams. "I'm...attracted to you, Luke."_

" _Most women are."_

Oh, great. Thanks.

" _I didn't mean it like that," he says. "Attraction is one thing. But this..." He waggles his finger between me and him. "...this..._ talking _...is something else entirely. Most witches just look at us as dogs. Sex objects. There's never any...communication."_

The finest dog _I've_ ever seen. _"Will I see you again?" I ask._

" _Maybe."_

" _When?"_

" _When you next need me."_

" _So you really are alive. I mean—in the 'real' world?"_

" _Define real."_

" _Not this world. The other one—you know, internet, Greyhound buses, idiot governments."_

" _Yes."_

I will find you.

" _No, you won't," he says._

" _You're reading my mind."_

" _We're_ inside _your mind right now. The statement is relative."_

A witty one, I see.

" _It's not wit. It's a fact," he says._

" _Would you stop it?" I say. "I want to see you again—not when I 'need' you. But when I want to."_

His lips nearly break into a grin. "You're the boss."

He begins to fade, and a sense of loss starts burning in my stomach.

" _He's coming," he says. "You still have strength to hold him back. I don't know_ why _you called me so early, but you still have strength. If I stay, it'll be bloody. You haven't told him of me, have you?"_

I shake my head.

" _Well, it'll work then. We won't have forced his hand. He'll think everything is going according to plan."_

He starts fading again.

I snap my hands around his wrists. "Wait, please don't go. Please—"

He stops fading, materializes again. "Fascinating," he says, looking down at my hands. My knuckles are white I'm holding him so tightly.

" _What's fascinating?"_

_He looks at his other arm. "You...are keeping me here. Crystal, you_ must _let me go or it_ will _get bloody for all of us. Do you understand that? Live and fight another day? Ever heard of that? If he's not ready to take you but he sees me here, we will force his hand."_

I release his wrist. He begins to fade, to disappear. I see the trees behind him, through him, as if they are covered by a thin film of fog. Going...

...and then it happens.

He stops fading.

And he does something...maddening.

It takes me a minute to realize it, but by then my legs are melted to nothing, and Lucien's lips are forcefully on mine again, his tongue inside me so deeply...and wonderfully...and magically...

Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop.

The kiss is passionate, desperate, frantic as it was before.

But it's something else as well. It's also soft and loving and...terrified.

Your mind. I see your mind. I see...

There's blackness in his mind, two parents gone, a friend. No, not a friend... Someone else, a girl with purple highlights. And he works at a...bar?

" _Don't look into my head," he says._

But I can't help it. I'm in it. And he's in mine. He's in every part of me even though only our tongues are touching. His mental hands are all inside me, over me. His very essence fills me as his actual hands slide down my thighs and grab the seams of my dress—

He stops.

" _You lost your parents...just like me," I say. "And you work at a bar."_

He looks down at me with terror in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kissed you—again."

" _You should have. Oh, you_ so _should have."_

A twig cracks. We both hear it. "I must leave," he says.

I clutch his wrist tightly, prevent him from going. "Where?" I beg. "Where can I find you?"

His eyes go dark, sad. "It doesn't work like that, Crystal. This is not me. I... Out there...I don't even know you exist."

My grip loosens. "I'll find you."

" _It's not meant to be," he says. "I'm a little like you, Crystal. Two worlds, one person. Only, in my case, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing."_

And then he's gone.

" _Say something?" Jack's voice behind me makes my skin suddenly cold._

" _J—Jack."_

" _Missed me?"_

I turn to face him. He's in the same attire I've seen him in for the last six months, that alligator tooth dangling dangerously by his chest.

" _Come, sit, let's have a talk," he says._

His arm touches my elbow, and I tense up.

" _Everything OK?" he asks._

" _Dandy."_

" _You seem tense."_

" _I'm fine."_

Jack's eyes go narrow. "One of them has been here, haven't they? Too afraid to stay and fight the mighty Jack."

" _Who?"_

" _You little...whore." And then he slaps me across the face._

" _What the fuck?"_

He tries to slap me again but I block him with my forearm. "Hey, I'm not your wife, you fucko."

I start to stand but somehow...

I can't move. Can't move at all!

Jack starts laughing, a very slow, pleased, self-satisfied chuckle that breaks out into a violent guffaw of hilarious mirth. Some birds fly away from the trees.

I can't move. Shit, I can't move!

" _You were the most fun, Crystal. The most fun. Very powerful. Very...unique indeed. Most girls woulda been in my pants already. But you, strange. Very strange. I was fascinated by ya, I muss confess. Your mind...so delightful. Such a lovely fuckin power you have. These worlds. Wow. But some of it is mine now, did you know that?"_

I say nothing.

" _I asked you a question, girl."_

" _Let me go."_

" _Can't even move in your own world, can you? Amazing, isn't it? You know, there are those of your kind who do only parlor tricks, moving things with their minds, pushing an emotion into someone else. It's all very entertaining. I slide into their worlds, and they're fascinated. They think I'm one of them. Cute, ain't it? Well, I lie. I do that well, you know. I have..._ The Voice _...we could call it. Girls listen to me. Men, too. Very...persuasive._

" _But you, my oh my oh my. Resistant! I decided to study you, to get to know you, to understand your power. It's so...similar to mine. So...demonic. Are you sure you're not a demon, darling? No sudden trips to one of the hells you can't remember? Huh? Nothing?_

" _Fascinating. Fascinating!_

" _But you are, my dear. You're one of us. A minion, a damned soul. You'll have to face it someday."_

" _I'm_ nothing _like you."_

" _Oh, tush tush. No need to get so darn excited, honey. This is just us folks shootin the shit as they say out East. Mowin the grass, a tete-a-tete. A parley. Y'unnerstann?_

" _Now, the hunter. When was he here?"_

" _What hunter?"_

" _You know who I mean."_

" _No, I don't—what hunter?"_

" _You're upsetting me, Crystal." His hand clutches my thigh and starts squeezing._ Can't move. Can't move! _"Who was it this time? Did they send the blonde with the nice clunkers? Or was it the Amazonian woman tall as a building, huh? Who did you call for the hunt against the mighty Jack? Don't tell me you went for the brute who thinks he's goddamn Tarzan with all those goddarned lines on his arms."_

Don't force his hand. _"I have no idea what you're talking about."_

His grip tightens, and I feel the bruise forming underneath his fingers. I won't show pain.

_There's doubt in his eyes._ He doesn't know Luke was here. Not if I don't let him know it.

" _I see," he says. "I see."_

I decide to play the innocent bystander. "What's wrong, Jack? Weren't we just gonna talk?"

He smiles slowly. "Talk. Hmmm. Talk." The smile grows larger. "Talkin days are over, sweet cheeks. I'm sorry ta burst yer bubble, but I think it's time you know. High time. Six months. Six months! But we're almost there. Almost. I want you to know, honey. I want you to know this ain't no dream. I want you to know that when you wake up, don't be havin the same damn ideas that I don't know shit about what's goin on in your head."

_Playing it innocent didn't work._ But he doesn't know a hunter was here. He still thinks he has a few more days. _"I'm starting to realize that," I say._

" _Fascinating. A fascinating power. We could rule the world, you and me. Well, not the world. Maybe just my cock. But it's all the same. I'd love to have your lips on my member a few times. Soon I will. You're difficult to persuade. But I always get my girl._ Always. _It's only a matter of time before I discover...your weakness. And when I do—oh, it's a party. A wonderful party."_

My leg is numb from his grip, my foot tingling.

" _I know you planned on leaving tomorrow. You're due on your rent as well. Oh, wait, I took all your money from your bag, so we're even. Quite a boodle you had there. Must be givin a helluva lotta head over at Old Man Bill's._

" _Well, darlin, good luck fuckin your way for bus money tomorrow. Or maybe you could just stay a few more days, huh? Just a few more days with yer uncle Jack, no?_

" _But before I go—before I go—lemme show you a little, how shall we call it—_ Magic Trick. _"_

_He laughs, and then something catches my eye, something terrible, something worse than I ever could have imagined. Years of work._ Years _. My only private place in the world, the only haven I had from the real world:_

The leaves on the trees start to turn brown. "No," I say.

" _Oh, yes. Yes."_

The grass starts to die, to wither.

" _Stop it. Stop it!"_

"Your _world? Not anymore, honeybunch."_

The water...

The water turns...red. Blood red. Oozing, thick, crimson. Fish float up to the top of it.

" _What are you doing to my world?"_

" _Why, darlin, I'm taking it over." He cackles. Cackles viciously. Cackles wildly so that it echoes off the blood-red waterfall._

Small worms appear at my feet—

" _STOP IT!"_

I go unconscious.

When I "wake up"—still in the dreamworld—the erstwhile idyll is like an aged cemetery, stinking of rotting flesh and dead animals. The water crimson, spiders on my legs—

I run...

...and I woke up screaming.

## -8-

It was daylight when I awoke. I could smell bacon and coffee and eggs coming from downstairs. I was tired, so tired. And my nose was dripping, my head cottony as if I were coming down with a cold.

And did something happen last night? Was there...an argument? A dream...?

I knew I had had a nightmare, but the images were weak, frail, gone the moment I had opened my eyes and felt the hot desert sun streaming in from the window.

Getting up off the bed was cumbersome. It felt like I was carrying a truck on my shoulders. My head ached. My neck was stiff. I felt drained. And there was a terrible pain on my thigh. I stumbled, looked down at it. _Bruises_. From the dream? They were in the shape of finger marks, as if someone...had grabbed...me.

Vague. So vague.

"Crystal, honey? Come on down fuh sum coffee, sweetcakes."

I started walking (more like limping) down to the kitchen. I had one of those feelings like something was wrong, so very wrong. But what?

"Crystal, sweetie pie. Come on down, babycakes. We got a lot to talk about."

My leg was bruised to the bone, my vision blurry. _They're deep, so deep, these bruises._

I got to the bottom of the stairs and looked at the last step thinking there should be something there. Something I had dropped the night before. What?

Jack sat at the kitchen table. I was in the entrance looking in. He chewed on a toast while reading the newspaper. Fresh coffee steamed from a tin cup in front of him. Bacon and eggs. "Breakfast?" he said.

And then it hit me. All of it.

It hit me so hard that my bladder almost broke.

I felt suddenly vulnerable, clad in nothing but a nightgown and slippers. Even if I could run, I'd look like one of those walk-ons from a horror movie just before the corpse's hand explodes out her back with a heart in its grip.

"You bastard," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"Where's my money?"

"What money, darlin?"

"The money in my bag."

"What bag?"

"You know damn well what bag."

"Goin somewhere?"

"Give me the cash."

"You're due on rent."

"A _fraction_ of what was in there."

"Indeed. Indeed. Wanna take it up with Sheriff Wallaby? He's an ole friend-a-mine, y'know? He'd be _mighty_ glad ta hear about how you been sellin yerself over there at Old Man Bill's for such good tips."

I had to get out. Had to. Would he tie me up in ropes and lock me in the basement? Would he shoot me in the back as I ran through his bedraggled front yard, past the rusted chevy and steel drums? Would I hear the cock of a rifle as he aimed...and fired?

"At least give me my clothes."

He chewed on his toast, squinted at me. Thought about it.

And then he bent down and picked up the duffel bag. Threw it at me across the kitchen. It landed two feet from me, and I bent down to pick it up, never taking my eyes off of him. The money wasn't in the bag.

"I know you're a demon. I remember all of it. _All_ of it." _So weak. Feeling so...woozy._

The expression on his face was complete confusion. "I'm sorry, what?"

_It's all in your head_. "You heard me. The dreams. These bruises." I slapped my leg to emphasize it.

"Rough night at the bar?"

His voice was smooth, so smooth... _and I feel I'm exaggerating. All in my head, after all—_

No!

I used every dreg of energy I had left inside me to fight his manipulative voice off. "Fuck you." I gave him the finger.

He sipped his coffee loudly. I needed my money. I wouldn't get far without it. I could go to Roxy...and say what? But I'd do it. I wouldn't hang around here for anything.

"You're a tough one," he said. "Uncrackable nearly. But you're breakable. All-a-ya! It's never taken six months, no siree. A challenge, is all. It's been mighty intrastin, _mighty_ intrastin, Crystal. But your time will come."

"I want my lake back," I said, understanding in some far corner of myself that its destruction had been completely real, and that I would never be able to return to that comforting recess of my mind again.

"What lake?" Jack should have been an actor. His face was completely dumbfounded.

This was going nowhere. I would ask him one more time for my money, and then I'd leave.

Instinctively, I stayed out of his head. I didn't even try and put any thoughts into it. I was...afraid, I admit. I didn't know what lay in there. Behind this man was an awful power, a power I didn't understand. And I knew when I'd been beat.

"The money," I growled.

He chewed, sipped more coffee. Chewed. It was a staredown fit for a Clint Eastwood Western. He bent down, dug in a different bag— _he's going to shoot me, right here, in his home_ —and pulled out...a wad of cash. "I ain't no thief, missy." He put it at the edge of the table. "Well, c'mon. C'mon, then. Pick it up."

I stared at the cash as if it were gold. Two thousand dollars at least. My life's savings. I stomped over to the table, picked up the cash, walked backwards. Turned.

_So...tired_.

I didn't care about the way I looked. I'd stop at a gas station and change. I just had to get out.

When I was almost out the door, he said, "Tommy, that was his name, right?"

My heart dropped to my knees.

"The boy...the one who lost his mind after _screwing_ you, right?"

_What is he talking about?_ But I was frozen. As much as I wanted to run, I couldn't. My skin was cold despite the desert heat.

Still at the door, I shouted out, "What do you know about Tommy?"

"Oh, darlin...I know... _everything._ Have fun now, sweetcakes. It's a _looooooong_ walk over to the airport."

I turned inwards from the door, left it open in case I needed to make a run for it. Walked two steps so I could see Jack in the kitchen again. "You get out of my head," I said, shivering. "Get out of my head!"

"Why, darlin, what in the world are you talkin about?"

"You know what I'm talking about. You know. The lake, the...blood."

"Blood?"

"How do you know about Tommy?"

He put the coffee down, maintaining a perfect view of concern. "Why, Crystal, you told us, Sirvana and me, when you arrived."

"I did not."

"Of course you did. You were a mess in those days, if you don't mind me saying it. Dithering and incomprehensible. You had just burned those trashcans and you were on the run. We took you in. You were afraid. You blathered on and on about your boyfriend who'd used you for sex and then dumped you."

He made it all sound so _reasonable_.

I started to doubt myself again. _Am I going insane? Is the dream only my own?_

He almost had me. If it had not been for the bruises... I know people can do some crazy shit in their sleep, but I couldn't imagine hurting myself so badly before waking myself up.

"Goodbye, Jack," I said.

His face went pale. And then, as I turned to walk away finally, he dropped the bomb on me. My only satisfaction is that I had rattled him; I had struck him where it hurts. He had never expected me to leave. He had given me the money and expected me to stay. He had used The Voice on me and failed. But now, feeling the anger dripping off his voice, I knew I'd gotten to him.

And I knew I had a chance.

He said, "Damn right I'm in your head little girl. I'm in it because you let me in it. And now I'm there to stay." I started walking faster, out the door, down the porch steps. Jack shouted behind me. "You can run, Crystal, but you will never, ever hide from me. You take me with you wherever you go. Always. Forever. I'M IN YOUR HEAD, GIRL!"

I ran until my legs couldn't carry me anymore, my bag heavy on my back. I forgot Roxy, the bar, the town, all of it. I went to a gas station and changed, ran to the nearest internet café to book my Greyhound ticket...and then discovered there were no buses arriving until two days from now.

You can run, Crystal, but you will never, ever hide from me.

I was in flight-mode, not thinking, adrenaline pumping. I had to get out. No option. No choice. _Must leave._

They say people can get into deeper states of knowledge when put in a fix. I didn't know if what I was doing was right or wrong, I just knew I had to _get out_. The nearest airport was two hundred miles away. I'd never make it on foot. But I was too afraid to stay; too many years of watching _The Walking Dead_ , perhaps. Or maybe it was reading _The Gunslinger_ that did it. Thinking about the Battle of Tull with that crazy religious fat woman running out with a pitchfork in her hand, inciting the locals to "get rid of the _interloper_!"

As if to confirm my fears...Sirvana appeared out of nowhere, driving slowly down the street in a station wagon, bags packed to the hilt in the backseat, a mattress on top of it.

She looked at me, arm outside the car. And stopped. She got out. Her wraith of a form looked like a skeleton in motion, her wispy white hairs blowing in a tangle of confusion from the easterly wind. I started to walk away, duffel bag on my back. I noticed her walking faster, faster, _faster._ Before long she was running, chasing me like the frail old woman she was.

"GET AWAY," she screamed. "GET AWAY. HE'S MINE. MINE, YOU WHORE!"

I thought of turning around and countering her attacks, but what would be the point? Ryce Brigham looked out of his hardware store and frowned. I saw the look of suspicion on his face. _Interloper!_

"HE'S MIIIIIIINE!"

_And now, the pitchforks will come_.

It finally culminated with Sirvana throwing an empty soda can at me, which missed me by a mile.

I made it to Highway 90. The road stretched ahead of me like a death sentence. The flu or the cold I'd come down with was in full force now, my nose dripping, my glands pounding. _I'll never make this_ , I thought.

But I'd never make it in the town, either.

## -9-

It didn't take long for me to dump the duffel bag. I could get new clothes. I pulled out a few shirts and some underwear, whatever I could carry in my hand, and dumped the rest. I put the cash I had into my shorts and stuck my thumb out in the hopes that _someone_ would drive past before I died of heat exhaustion.

_Should have bought some water, Crystal_.

I had escaped the trap, and now my senses were coming to me. I could have stopped at the store. My imagination had gotten the best of me. _Or had it?_

It's all in your head, Crystal.

You can run, Crystal, but you will never, ever hide from me.

No. I had done the right thing. I might die while doing it, but I had done the right thing. I could sense it.

My vision was even more hazy, and my head felt like a watermelon that's been shot by a rifle. The heat was dizzying. I had stopped sniffling, and I wasn't sure if my current malaise was from the cold I was catching or from the sun. Maybe both.

I started to stumble, ever keeping my thumb out in the hopes of finding someone. No one had driven past in two hours, and the sun was quickly rising overhead. My neck was drenched with sweat. I almost took my shirt off, but it was risky enough hitchhiking as a single woman. I didn't want to look like a hooker on the side of the road.

The top of my head was on fire. I covered it with the few clothes I had in my hands. I must have looked a sight, bras dangling down by my ears, and panties. The floor seemed to sway as I moved...

... _and it's made of lush, wet grass. I feel the freshness of the air on my skin as the water sprays from a fountain_ —

The heat was too hard for me to delve into my inner world and pretend I was walking down a luscious river. But the thought occurred to me: If Jack had given me bruises— _real_ bruises—in my dream, and they had appeared on my leg, wouldn't I be able to drink water in my mind and quench my thirst?

The attempt was futile. As hard as I tried, dreaming of water only made me more thirsty.

I felt like my inner worlds were disappearing completely from me. No matter what effort I put into them, all I saw was the desert, the glow of the hot blacktop, and endless miles of road. _I'm going to die._

I racked my mind about the last six months with the man called Jack, trying to find signs of anything that could have made me suspicious of him over the last half-year. But there was nothing. There had been only Lucien's vague warning a few months earlier, but nothing in it had alerted me to Jack himself.

If Jack had been playing me, he was a master. _And when did I tell him of Tommy? Or did he pick that thought from my head while I wasn't looking?_

I knew one thing at least after having left Marfa, something groundbreaking for me, something I had always wondered about: _There are others around like me_. Jack and Luke had both confirmed it.

Lucien. Human. _I saw him. I saw him at that bar with the industrial fans and the short lady with the red hair. And the girl behind the bar with the nose ring and the purple highlights. She loves him, that girl. I can see it._

But I couldn't see _him_ in the memory of the bar. Not as such. I had looked at it...through his own eyes. _And I had felt his humanity, as human as anyone, with doubts and fears and...sadness. Terrible sadness for...what?_

I felt drained, tired. Had Jack sucked the strength away from me? It was a possibility. All of it was a possibility now. Mind games. A hunter. _Demons..._

But it all took a back seat. As my legs began to burn, as my lips began to thirst and crack, as the road began to take on menacing eyes, it all took a back seat...to survival.

You can run, but will never, ever hide...

I walked faster. Still no cars. I stretched my mind out to see if I could "find" an entity nearby. I had never done such a thing. Life is the best teacher. You hear of people scaling a ten-foot-high wall when the cops are after them. The "experts" explain it away with an adrenaline rush or the sudden expulsion of power from lactic acid deep down in the muscles or some bullshit like that. The reason people scale those walls is they have magic inside them. After what I've experienced in my life, I'm convinced of this now. Magic resides in everyone. Some of us, well, we just have easier access to it.

I had escaped Marfa. Jack wasn't in my head anymore, at least not right now. Nothing was in my head. Nothing at all. _Just thirst. Terrible thirst._

My feet plodded down like cannonballs, each cumbersome and slow and...

... _so thirsty, so thirsty, so thirsty_.

The clothes I had been holding simply fell off my head, and the thought of needing a second bra was so secondary to the thought of liquid on my lips, that I just kept going. _Must. Keep. Walking._

The sun passed over my head and then started staring at me, dead ahead. _I'm heading west...ish,_ I realized. _West. Go west. West._ The idea took on form, a mantra of semi-consciousness. _I must go west._ The shine of the sun up ahead became a calling. A tribal drum. A hypnotic urge to _Go West!_ An inner sense of something like Destiny.

Nothing in my life has been a coincidence.

I walked and walked and walked until my ankles felt like rusted hinges.

The horizon became red and bloody. Then a purple haze of threat. _And when it goes down...the coyotes will appear. Not a single vehicle. Not a single biker or car in the last ten hours. Must. Walk. Must. Not. Stop._ But the world began to sway, the horizon started to spin, the sky began to wobble.

Behind me, I heard a rattling truck in the distance.

## -10-

It took a moment for me to believe it was real. Almost out of habit I stuck my thumb out, not believing what I was hearing.

Finally the sound became louder, a _ratatattletattle_ of a diesel engine held together with wire clothes hangers. _Can it be?_ I turned my head, the neck muscles aching madly. _Headlights._

I kept my thumb out, hoping against hope that the person would stop. I was aware of my predicament, a young girl in skimpy shorts with her thumb stuck out as the sun was going down. But water and survival were forefront. I had gotten away from the Svengali who, unbeknownst to me, had kept me trapped for half a year. It was up to me to make it all the way out of that trap.

The truck approached, sped up, looked like it would stop...and then went past me. The disappointment was bone-cracking. _The only car in ten hours..._

I was too dry too weep. Too tired to feel regret.

I almost fell to my knees, ready to collapse and be bitten by snakes. I had led an interesting life. But a meaningless one. It happens. And now it would finally end. _There is no place in this world for people like me._

I was about to drop, feeling the weakness in my thighs...when I heard the car grind to a stop.

My hand was still out, a limp thumb outstretched like a corpse's as the car screeched backwards and came to a slamming halt in front of me. The man inside wore a white cowboy hat and a bluejeans jacket. He grinned widely and had a thin, plain face of about thirty years. His hand was outside the door and his head almost as well, peering at me as if I were a phantom or a street urchin.

He laughed. "Why, woodja look at that! Howdy missy. Wanna ride?" My mouth was so dry I couldn't answer, my head pounding so hard I didn't know if I was gonna make it into the truck. "Wanna drink?"

He reached inside and grabbed a beer bottle. I clutched it madly, almost dropping it, and guzzled the whole thing so fast it landed in my stomach like lead.

And then I retched.

The man chuckled loudly. "Calm down, missy. There's plenny more where that came from. Hop in. You gotta drink it slow if you been dehydratin all day. You been walkin all this way by yerself?" I didn't realize he was out of the car. His arms were around me now and he was moving me to the other side, opening the door for me. He kept talking all the way. "I imagine you musta come from that lil town Marfa. Never been there misself. Nice town, I heard. Lotta foreigners from out East. You come from there? Out East?" His voice faded as he closed the door and kept on talking as he walked around the front of the car. "—fine girl such as yerself might get hurt around here. I'm Robert. Robert Calahan." He stuck his hand out to me from the driver's seat, and the liquid had woken me up enough for me to notice it. "Pleasure to make yer acquainnance." The car started with a rattle and a crash, and my body fell hard against the backseat. The truck smelled of beer and leather and cigarettes. "There's more beer down there by yer feet. Help yisself. My, am I glad I got me some company. And a fine girl such as yisself on top of it. Sometimes the good Lord puts things in our way fuh a reason, dontcha think? Go on now, have a beer. Help yisself. Fine girl. _Real_ fine girl."

I didn't care about the quality of the ride or the driver. I felt like I was in a limo now, being driven down Sunset Boulevard by the greatest chauffeur that ever lived.

"Mighty fine. Damn, you got some legs on you, dontcha?"

And that's when I felt his mental hand on my left leg.

When I looked at the steering wheel, both his hands were still there. _Now it begins, as always,_ I thought. _If it's his mind only, I can deal with it. I can deal._

The beer had gone straight to my head on my empty stomach. The car was swaying and I struggled to keep my eyes open. I was still thirsty, but I couldn't risk losing my senses. "Go on, honey, go on, open another one. Gimme one while you're at it, wontcha? What luck I tellya. What luck." He popped the beer bottle open with his teeth and started to guzzle it down, looked down at my leg again. Looked at it for so long I thought we'd drive off the road.

I feel your eyes. And I feel everything else, too.

I forced a barrier between me and him, as I'd learned to do when I was younger. But some men are persistent, and my strength was down. Loquacious Robert here wasn't evil so much as _expectant_. He'd saved a damsel, and expected some "gratitude" for it. That's probably how they did it down here. Would he _insist_ on the gratitude? Was it like a handshake to him? _Well, glad I gave you a ride, honey, nice to fuck ya, have a nice time. Anytime, anytime!_

I felt the dirty hands of his thoughts up my thighs, under my shirt. I shuddered. Somehow, I was gonna scale this ten-foot wall. _Somehow_.

Loquacious Robert kept blabbering away in between his mental cuddle-up, telling me about his cattle and how he was bartending up in Austin for a few weeks and met a missy— _yeehah, could she give it like she could take it_ —and they screwed each other's brains out. He was...

I faded out, smiled at the appropriate times. And in my head, like a hopeless refrain with jagged guitars and dissonant drums, was the beat Jack had instilled in me: _You can run, but will never, ever hide from me._

As the booze faded away from my system, and my body temperature cooled off, I looked for my world again. My lake, my peace. And I found a shimmer of it. But my relief was short-lived. I only needed to glance at it once to see it was rotten and foul, the blood of the water turning sour.

It was Robert's real hand that brought me back to reality. With a thud.

I had been feeling his pressure and insistence all the while, salted between his words. But it had all been mental. Now his _actual_ hand was on my thigh. And it was gripping tightly... _like Jack gripped me last night._

My reaction was instantaneous. Second-nature. Fight or flight.

My reaction was something I had never done before up to that point. Not with such ferocity.

It was a ten-foot wall and the cops were after me, drooling mastiffs snapping their jaws behind me while I stood there waiting to be ripped apart.

If it had only been my leg, I might have let it slide. But it hadn't been. And it happened so fast that I had no time to think.

Ten-foot wall!

Robert had been holding his beer in his left hand, window open, and then his right hand was on my thigh, and almost instantly...up under my shorts.

The ten-foot wall I scaled was this:

I found a hidden ability of mine, without thinking, an ability to... _put a memory, an imagination_...in someone's head, and make them believe it's real. I didn't know how I'd done it, but I had. I found what he wanted, sticking my hand in the cookie jar of his mind and _taking_ his deepest desires from him. I dug deep, so deep, as his hand slid up toward a spot it would _never_ reach if I had anything to say about it. And I found what he wanted.

The idea went from me to him like a gunshot.

From my head to his head.

And he passed out.

The car swerved off the road and tires screeched and metal creaked. We went off to the side. I pulled up the handbrake and somehow the car jolted to a stop. I'd knocked him out with the thought. A thought which had disgusted me, repulsed me... _but which wasn't the real thing. A false memory; an imagination within an imagination. A world within a world._

I started laughing. Actually loudly _laughing_.

According to Robert here, he'd just gotten the best head of his life, slow and tasty, with all the sick fucko thrills that punks like him think is the way to treat a woman: grabbing my hair, making me choke on his foul cock. Coming into my mouth and then making me swallow. Keeping me down. I had taken a thought of his own, from _his_ mind, as if with a needle, and then fed it to him with a horse syringe as a false memory.

But I had done it too well. It had hit him like a sledgehammer. I was both elated and shocked at my new-found skill. I would need to be smoother in the future or risk losing my life in a head-on collision. _And if he wants me, if Jack wants me and can find me, maybe I can use this on him. Maybe I could fool him as well._

I slapped Talkative Rob twice on the cheek, shook him. I felt his pulse. _He's alive, thank heavens._ The last thing I needed was to be taken in for murder. I shook him some more. Nothing. Slapped him again. Nothing.

The second ten-foot wall appeared like a mirage. _I'm learning. Life is teaching me_. It was like I suddenly had access to this deep Well of Knowledge that had been hidden from me, a Well shared by mutual minds like my own, spanning centuries of wisdom, back, back, seeping into the very souls and psyche of every witch alive. _I can feel it within me, the knowledge, mine for the taking_.

Had Jack blocked my access to this knowledge? Had that been his trick? Did he have some sort of shield preventing me from finding it? Was Sirvana blocked from the knowledge? Had I known what to do next simply because I had never had to search so deep for an answer before, and the necessity of the situation brought me to it now?

It didn't matter. Because I knew. I _knew_ what to do, how to bring him out of it. _And how to manipulate his mind_. The implications of the skill weren't fully apprehended by me yet. I was in pure survival mode. Was it OK because I was on the run, desperate? Would I do it...even if I wasn't? And, more profoundly: If I can do it, can others as well?

But these questions would come later, once I was out of the woods and on my way to California. The moral implications of it are something I would have to deal with at another time.

I _searched_ his mind, searched deep through the filth which were his conquests of the past, saw their names, their faces, their bruises... Down, down, down, deep into his subconscious... _There._ I found his deepest fantasy, stuck my hand in there and ripped it out and fed it to him like hay to a horse.

I did it slowly this time, delivering it to him in increments, taking care of the details, _the whips, the handcuffs, the needles, the drugs, the screaming..._

Robert smiled in his daze. _He's waking up._

I fed him the orgasm, the sounds of it all—but felt nothing myself; nothing except a slight revulsion at watching this scene of his play out in his mind.

Right at the end of it, I fed him a new idea, fed it slowly, like a hypnotic command: _You had your fill of her, Robby boy. You scored! You got them photos of her in yer phone, m'boy. But now you's sick-a her. She ain't_ that _good. Candy was better, had a bigger ass, way bigger titties. Fuck this middle-of-the-road runaway. Why, I reckon the bitch got diseases as well. Drop her off at the airport and leave her be. She don't give good head anyway, all that choking and shit, goddamnit._

He coughed, woke up with a dopey smile. "What the fuck? How did we get here?"

I smiled innocently at him, fluttered my eyes.

"Oh, right." He looked down at his pants, and I could sense his confusion at being dry. _An imagination within an imagination._ I'd let him figure that out after I left. He didn't seem bright enough to figure it out in the next hundred miles.

He dropped me off at the airport and I sat on a bench. Breathed.

_I'm safe_ , I realized. _Safe._

I went to the store and ordered a hot dog.

It was here that the moral implications hit me. I was fed, no longer thirsty, no longer running. So I started to think...

_What have you become?_ I asked myself.

_I'm like him, like Jack_. _I'm doing what he does. Was he like me once?_

I jumped on the next available bus, Jack's chorus never leaving my head. _You can run, but will never, ever hide from me._

## -11-

Tommy Halyarck was found hanging in his parents' garage the next day. On his chest was a cardboard sign tied around his neck with catgut. On the cardboard were etched the words

BEWARE THE WAREHOUSE

WITCHES LIVE

I found out about it by chance on my way to Cali.

I didn't have a phone so I had stopped at a payphone and called him up. I had had a terrible feeling about him.

And the feeling had been true.

His mother answered in a state. She was happy to hear from me. And then she broke the news to me.

The booth I was in shattered around me. Tears filled my eyes and I just stood there, holding on to the phone by some force of unknown grace. "Crystal? Crystal, are you there?"

I wasn't. I was somewhere else.

I was in Marfa.

I was spinning.

I was all over the world.

I don't remember if I said goodbye. The bus was leaving again and before I knew it I found myself on it and tumbling down the road, going west. I wept constantly, silently. It's not that I still loved Tommy, it's that I knew this was somehow my fault.

At the next stop, I found an internet café and went online. I found an article in a local newspaper about his death.

TROUBLED TEEN TAKES OWN LIFE

He had been on medication for almost as long as I'd been away. _Delusional, hallucinatory_. These were the words used to describe his state of mind. All bullshit.

If he had only admitted of what he had really seen and experienced with me, he would not have been considered any of those things—at least not by himself. And that's what's important, what _you_ think of yourself. Everyone else can shove it.

This was a lesson I was still learning.

_His mind was weak_ , I tell myself today.

But whose mind isn't when confronted with a demon?

Soon the tears gave way to abject dismay, a hopelessness so deep that they could carve a new Grand Canyon out of it. The bus bounced my body around as I pressed my head to the window and stared at nothing. _Nothing. Nothing at all..._

...When Luke appeared next to me on the bus, I didn't even flinch. "I'm sorry about your friend," he said.

I didn't reply.

He looked different. For one thing, he had clothes on. But his eyes were the same, a soft cerulean blue with anguish and depth in them.

"You couldn't have done something for him?" I asked resentfully.

"No."

"You're awfully sure of yourself," I said.

Luke— _Lucien_ —stared straight ahead, quiet, his head bouncing gently from the bumps. "Tommy wasn't a witch. So his mind was not strong enough to call for help. If he had called, a hunter would have arrived."

"Some system."

Luke shrugged. "It works."

"Are you really here?" I asked.

"No."

"I fell asleep. This is a dream."

"Yes."

"You could take lessons from Loquacious Robert, y'know."

"Who?"

"Never mind. What are you doing here?"

"You called me."

"And what, are you like my freakin guardian angel or something?"

"I told you, I'm sorry about your friend. There was nothing I could do about it. His mind was...long gone already—a long time ago."

_Yes, I know_. "Don't." I put my finger up to him. "Don't read my mind."

"I can't read everything. Only some things. And only in this world."

I looked out the window, not really caring for anything...when I felt his gentle hand on my leg. It was nothing like Loquacious Rob's. I welcomed it, felt calmed by it. It even trembled slightly as it had touched me.

It killed me.

It shot every defense I had to nothing, to shreds, to flinders and smithereens.

"You can't do that," I said.

"I know."

"I don't know who you are. I don't know why you're...in my head. The last guy who was in my head just killed the first and only boy I ever loved."

"I know." His hand squeezed down on my thigh...

... _Such calmness, such peace..._

His hand moved away, and I found myself grabbing for it, putting it back where it had been.

"Don't go," I said. "Please, don't go."

The stiffness in his hand eased, and finally I could remove my own and be confident his would stay where it was. The warmth of it relaxed me. My sadness for Tommy stopped being so sharp and unbearable. "Will you stay with me the whole trip?" I asked.

"As long as you're asleep."

Then I'll take sleeping pills.

"No, don't do that," he said. "It's not good for you."

"Why can't I read your mind? That's kind of my thing."

"Maybe out there you could." He pointed out the window.

"What—on the side of the road?"

"Are you purposefully being obtuse? No, in the _other_ world you likely could read my thoughts. I don't know why you can't do it in here, in your own dream _._ But _I_ can't do it out there, if you must know, only in here."

"Every time you appear, you say I called you."

"Well, didn't you?"

"I was thinking of you..."

"There you go."

"But I've thought of you a l—" I decided to stop the statement.

"And I of you," he said. "But the call only works when a witch is in danger." He looked around at the somnolent scene, the bobbing heads of sleeping passengers. "Well, at least that's how it _has_ been...before...you. We're...at your command."

"Like a slave."

"Yes."

I got an instant dirty thought of me and him; him being my slave.

He said nothing, but I was certain he knew what I'd just thought of.

"So, I could tell you to jump off this bus and you would?"

"No."

"Could you try using more words than simply No and Yes?"

"Yes."

I exhaled in frustration.

"Explain," I said, "about the slavery thing."

"We do what's called for, what's needed, to protect...your kind."

"My... _kind_?"

"Yes."

"Witches," I said.

"It's a name that's been given to people like you. Although I don't like it too much."

"So what do _you_ call my _kind_?"

He looked at me meaningfully. "Angels," he said. "But it's a misnomer in itself."

"Oh, so you don't think I'm an angel?"

His jaw tensed. "This flirting _must_ stop, Crystal."

"You're the one with your hand on my leg."

He looked sharply at it. _Don't take it away, don't take it away._

He didn't.

"If you want to take it away, you can," I said.

"Thank you, ma'am. But I don't want to take it away."

"So you're _not_ a slave to me."

"It..." He coughed. "It doesn't seem like it. Which is what...is most concerning." His grip tightened. "It's confusing. In this world, I do my duty, that's all. A duty to protect your kind. But with you..."

"Just don't tell me it's unusual."

"OK, I won't tell you, even though I'm thinking it."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"This?" he asked.

"Don't be _obtuse_ ," I retorted. _I'll flirt if I want to._

I'm sure I saw his lip twitch into a smile. "Almost ten years," he said. "But it feels like a century. Time is different in here."

"I know," I mumbled. "And in ten years you've never been 'called' to a bus ride?"

"Not if there weren't raving demons on the bus. There aren't any here, I know it."

"Hmpf. So I'm...different, huh? Like a special being." I was being sarcastic.

"Seems like it." He was being completely serious.

"Pfft. What a joke."

I felt his hand tense up.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I just... So what do we do now? Why do you keep arriving in my dreams?"

"I've been asking myself the same question. Normally, by the time I arrive, the witch is almost dead, and my longsword is slashing away at demons left and right trying to free her."

"Why?" I asked. "Why do you guys do that? What's in it for you?"

"Why does the sun rise in the east? Why is the sky blue? It's just who we are, what we do."

"How many more of you are there?"

"Hunters?"

I nodded.

"I don't know how many. Sometimes more than one hunter gets called and I meet the others. But there must be a few thousand of us. I sense it, as if we were all of the same mind. It's hard to explain."

"No, I get it. Can I meet them?"

"If you call them, yes. A witch calls a different hunter according to her needs."

"Her... _needs_?"

He smirked. "You know I didn't mean it like that."

I thought of when he'd arrived naked in my dream. "I didn't know how you meant it. _You're_ the one who seems to have all the answers."

"I don't. But I'll be happy to answer your questions if I can. It seems like it's gonna be a long ride."

"Tell me about the hunters."

"What about them?"

"Oh, I don't know. Do you have a big hunter party on a Friday night? Hunter Football Games? Something. Anything."

"We can access the witch inner worlds when called, but are oblivious to it in the real world. When I wake up—you're only a dream. Nothing...but a dream."

"But I'm not a dream. I'm on a bus to LA. I'll... Shit, I don't have a phone. You can find me again and I'll give you my address."

He touched my cheek and his thumb pressed down on my cheekbone. "I won't remember," he said. "I..."

"You're fucking kidding me."

"No."

"Where do you live? I'll find _you_."

"I can't tell you that."

"Why?"

"It goes against my duty." Then, more pensively, "So does...kissing you...actually." Pause.

"So _everything_ you do in this world is based off duty?"

Pause.

"Luke?"

"I... It used to be."

"Until I came around."

"Yes."

"Then tell me where you live."

I saw his lips trying to move, and then he gave up. "I...actually can't. Literally. I'm not able to. I'm thinking the name, seeing its letters, but I can't get the words out in here no matter how hard I try. It's part of our make-up, like breathing is part of our bodies."

"I'll look in your mind and find it." I tried, but there was nothing, only the scene at the bar, but it could be any bar.

"You confuse me," he said. "The duty is not clearly defined with you. I look into your eyes and...all I want... I can't say it."

"Say it," I said, a little too emphatically.

"I want to take..." He looked at my shirt. "I want to take your clothes off. I want to... It's out of control. It's..."

I tightened my legs. "Talk," I commanded.

"I... It's beyond duty. I know the feeling of duty. It's like a huge magnet. I can sense it. I know its flavor, its color, its texture. This urge I have for you—it's not duty. It's not. It's...desire."

My skin was getting hot.

"I want you for no other reason than that," he said. "I want to pry..." Pause.

"Pry what?"

He burned me with his gaze as his eyes shot down my stomach, to between my legs. "I think of what you smell like, what you taste like. I dream of it, wonder about it."

"This is turning into a wet dream," I said. _Did I actually just say that?_

"This world is more real to me when I'm in it, than the one out there. This is no dream, Crystal. I want you. And I don't know why I want you. And that's bad. It goes against everything I've known in the last ten years."

My mouth went completely dry. I wanted him too. I wanted to glide my tongue slowly down his chest and feel his nipple on the tip of my tongue...

"Jack found a way into your world," Luke said, changing the subject. "He got high on your power, like a syringe full of heroin. It would have ended with sex. It always does with them. He would have forced himself on you in this world and taken you painfully. But you needed to be weak for that. Demon though he is, he cannot force a witch to do anything against her will unless she is weakened by his parasitic drain.

"Jack weakens a witch within two weeks usually. Two weeks. You lasted six months. You're the first, Crystal. It's unheard of. Your power—it's almost...demonic."

"You're saying I'm a demon?"

"I'm saying I don't know."

I felt my skin go cold. "You're not here to hunt Jack, are you? You're here to hunt... _me_."

He swallowed. "I'm here because I was called. Usually the situation is easy to decipher. This one...isn't. For all I know, you're draining my own power, pulling me off my duty, weakening _me_."

"You're a liar."

"Should I leave?"

_Damnit._ "No." _Damnit._ "How do I know? Wouldn't I have a memory of going to hell or some shit like that? Having dinner with the Big Man with the Tail downstairs?"

"There are many devils. And there are many hells and heavens and worlds in between. But the gods and devils are irrelevant. They're more like _powers_ instead of actual entities that you can have a conversation with. There's just us, Crystal. Us...and the powers. Demons were all once witches. This much I know. How do they become demons? That I don't know. But I intend to find out. Like I said, for all I know, _you_ could be a demon."

My hairs were standing on my arms from rage. "For all I know, _you_ could be a demon."

"I could."

_Fucking asshole_.

"I deserved that," he said. "Look, would you stop worrying about what I said about you being a demon? I was thinking out loud, alright? I don't believe that's the case."

"Yeah, you could have told me I was fat, I might have forgotten it quicker."

We sat silently for a while, Luke saying nothing, just looking straight ahead, bouncing in rhythm to the bus. _And the urge inside me burns, feeling him this close to me. If he's a demon who weakens me for sex, it's working, because all I can think of is sliding my panties down, pulling his jeans down, and feeling the moisture of our skins as I slip him inside of me..._

"I'm attracted to you," I said honestly. Why lie?

"And I to you."

_Fuck._ I refrained adroitly from fanning my shirt. _I see his life again, see him at that bar, see the girl with the purple highlights who is his friend and who loves him_. "I know you're no demon. You're human. I know it."

"I could be tricking you, putting thoughts into your head."

"No. I know when someone does that. I can...sense it."

"Taste its flavor..." he said absently.

"Hmm?"

"When a thought is not your own, you know its flavor, its color, its texture."

"Yes."

"Just as I know what duty is and what isn't."

"I didn't know Jack was doing it," I said. "I didn't taste _that_ flavor."

"Maybe a part of you did. There's no other explanation for you calling me. A witch only calls a hunter when she senses she's in danger from a demon."

"And what if I _am_ a demon, will you kill me?"

"I told you I don't believe you are."

"Hypothetically. Would you kill me?"

"Yes."

"Oh, great, thanks." I rolled my eyes.

"I should leave," he said. "I've overstayed—"

"Goddamnit, you damn well stay until I tell you you can leave."

He smiled embarrassedly. "Yes, ma'am."

"So...you really don't remember any of this...out there?"

He shook his head. "In here I remember both worlds. I remember all the past dreams, every hunt I've been in. I remember my mother in the other world, all of it. But when I wake up it fades like a hand through gossamer. In life I'm a 'normal guy.' When I sleep I find myself in...worlds. Other worlds. And, well, I find myself wielding a sword and a shield."

"When did it start?" I asked.

"A long time ago."

I wanted to hear it. And I wanted to keep him talking. If he kept talking, the dream would continue. "Tell me about it, all of it. I wanna know."

He hesitated a second before diving into it, but then he told me the whole thing. "The first time it happened, I was confused, lost, adrift. I was young in real life, but in this world I was a man." He swallowed. "There was a ritual happening, a woman on a slab, two men next to her. Her eyes were dull and lifeless, but I knew she was alive. I just knew it. Dreams—you _know_ things. Blood dripped down her arm in a long gash. She was clothed, but barely. A man stood behind her, large and...rubbing...himself."

"Jerking off."

"I was trying to put it more politely."

"I read Sylvia Day, brother. Don't hold back."

"Yeah, he was jerking off, jacking his monkey, spanking his baby. Better?"

I tried to roll my eyes again, but I laughed instead.

"He had a mask on—old, African mask," Luke said. "Massive, covered him all the way to the middle of his chest. Another man in fur was cutting patterns in the woman's body with a sharp blade. She moaned. The masked man—the masturbator—was going nuts on his cock while her lips murmured something soft and painful.

"Drums beat in the distance, a regular rhythm of trance chants. Fire burned behind them. The masked man was going wild, standing above her, ready to come on her skin. His muscles bulged like something savage.

"I wasn't sure what I was seeing, if she _wanted_ to be a part of this, if she was there by choice, if she was a prisoner.

"I felt the sweat on my hands, felt a tremendous fear in my muscles. _This is real_ , I thought to myself. You know how it goes in a dream. It's real. It's all real.

"And then I heard her scream. But not outwardly—I heard her scream _in her mind._ It was a ghastly sound, echoing and lonely. I realized she was awake, drugged with something that kept her conscious, feeling the pain of the knife as it slid down her smooth skin, fully aware of the guy about to jack his load off on top of her.

" _This is real_ , I said to myself again. _And I will die if I attack them._ I knew this. I did. I knew it to my core." He sat looking straight ahead.

"And?" I said. "Did you go for them?"

"I did."

"And did you save the girl?" I was a little excited about it all.

He looked down, pressed two fingers into his eyes. "N—no. She...died."

"Oh."

"They stabbed her when they saw me screaming toward them. I felt the knife go into her body as if it had been driven into my own stomach, tearing the innards apart. The man ejaculated at the same time. It was horrible.

"I fought them both, but they were too powerful for me. One of them I managed to get with a boot to the nose. But the other dug his knife into my side. Added to the pain I felt from the woman— _her_ pain in my body—I was fading, dying in my own dream.

"I'm pretty sure I would have died if my mother hadn't woken me. I was running a fever, had been for a few days.

"I spoke of sacrifices and chants and...then it all faded.

"That was my first hunt. There have been many others since. I'd love to tell you I saved them all, but I didn't. Many of them died. Too many of them. Men _and_ women. Witches are not only female, although it seems to be the higher percentage. Just as hunters seem to be mostly male. Although Dania is probably the best huntress, male or female, I've ever come across.

"It took me years to perfect my skills, to sneak up on them at their own game.

"I've never fought Jack, but I've heard of him from other hunters. You're the first witch to ever escape his clutches in one piece that I know of."

"Unusual," I said.

"Tell me about it. But...I'm glad.

"Just as you have your powers, so do we. We _sense_ travail, and come to it. We also _sense_ the duty at hand. No two hunters ever share the same duty—at least not from what I've seen. We land in someone's world, and are expected to perform that duty. If two hunters are called at the same time, it becomes clear rapidly which one is being called more strongly, and so the other one leaves. No explanation. Just doing. Sink or swim. It's the only way to weed out the weak. And the witches...they call the hunter they're most in tune with. A weak witch will call a weak hunter."

"And so they both die," I said.

"Yes."

"And I'm still alive."

"Yes."

"Which says something."

He shrugged. "I share in the power of the witch I've been called to fight for. So, essentially the witch saves herself. More powerful witches live longer. I'm the means to an end."

"A powerful means."

"It's teamwork."

"You're very modest."

"It's the truth."

"When was that? The sacrifice."

"The first hunt was...when I was twelve."

" _Twelve?_ "

"My body was twelve. My mind is older. Much older."

"You were a twelve year old boy running to attack two rapists?"

"I don't mirror myself in this world. I had the body of a man in that dream."

"You're skinny in real life?"

"No. I just don't mirror myself...usually. Except...with you."

"What do you mean?"

He lifted his hands up as if displaying a car. "What you see is what you get."

I liked what I saw.

His hand went to my leg again. He had been waving it around while talking. I put mine over his and held it. "So you're twenty..."

"...two," he said. "But my mind—"

"—is older. I get it."

"Yours is old, too," he said.

"Not sure how to take being called _old_."

"It's a compliment. Old minds are powerful."

I found myself squeezing his hand harder. "Oh, I'm sure you tell all the witches that."

He said nothing.

"That was a joke, Lucien."

"Again with the _Lucien_."

"Does it bother you?"

Pause. "Not so much as it...excites me. Perhaps..." Pause. "Perhaps... No, I can't get my hopes up."

"What?"

"I wish I _could_ know—out there. I wish I could. Maybe the choices I've made with you are a sign. Maybe the fact that I 'thought' about you—catch my drift?—was a sign that the two worlds will finally join. Or maybe it's just something else completely."

"Maybe we're here to help each other."

His fingers tightened on my leg.

"I know about your life," he said. "Your _real_ life. It came to me when I first saw you. Flashes of your history, just segments of it. I knew about Tommy, how he'd hurt you. He had a weak mind, Crystal. Weaker than most. I know about...Raymond, when you were thirteen."

My heart sank at hearing the name. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I'm trying to understand...my attraction to you. It's never happened before. But I want you to know...that it's more than...your body, your looks. It's... I knew you in an instant, I knew your fears, your troubles, your worries. It all came to me like a fist."

"And yet you still thought I was a demon."

"Not really. I was just being mean."

"Flirting," I said.

"Maybe."

"Have you appeared naked in front of any other witches?"

He cleared his throat. Blushed. "Uhm, no. But I told you—"

"I know, I know. You appeared in the form I supposedly would have found most amenable."

"And?" he asked.

Now it was my turn to blush. "No comment." But he was also still red.

"You look cute when you blush. It suits your...rugged...build."

"Rugged?"

_Damn._ I was starting to feel hot. "Forget I said that."

He locked his eyes on me. "And what if I don't want to forget?"

_Remember to breathe, remember to breathe, remember to breathe_. "This is turning into one of _those_ kinds of dreams," I said. "But there is no logic in dreams."

"In _dreams_ , yes," he said. "But you know as well as I this is no dream."

_And yet...it is._ "A witch never threw herself at you after you saved her from demise? It sounds so positively...chivalrous."

"You're mocking me."

"Put it down to jealousy."

"And if you must know, yes, they've thrown themselves at me."

Urgh. "And?"

"What?"

"You had them."

"Had?"

"C'mon, you're killing me. Did you fuck them or didn't you?"

He swallowed. "Is it relevant?"

"So you did."

"No comment."

"It's fine," I said, "but from now on, I don't want you to fuck another witch in your dreams."

"You're jealous?"

"Yes."

"OK. Fine. It's a deal. And if you _must_ know—"

"I mustn't, it's fine."

"I want to tell you."

"I don't want to know about your past conquests."

"They were no conquests. They—"

"No! I don't want to know."

"It was only a few, and I hated all of them."

"Huh?"

"Do you want to know now?"

_Tricked._ "Urgh, fine, yes."

"It was sex. Sex in a dream. Meaningless. I've had better sex with humans. Witches have always been a little..."

"A little?"

"Not you, of course."

"Of course."

"A little," he continued, "rough. Not rough as in passionate. Just—it's like they were fucking an animal and the whole thing was over in a few thrusts and there was a bunch of biting and... Anyway, I think they enjoyed it more than I did."

_I'm sure._ "And what about this? Have you ever sat and gotten to know a witch?"

"No."

"Not even a _guy_ witch?"

"No."

"Any theories?"

"It means I like you, isn't that obvious?"

"In a _slave_ kind of way?"

"No. This is a choice." He looked at me again. "And I'm happy with what I chose."

We said nothing for some miles.

"Don't go," I finally said.

"What gave you the idea I was going?"

"Nothing. But we've gone silent. And I don't want you to go. And I know that eventually I'll wake up, and...you'll be gone."

"I know," he croaked.

"You'll remember nothing?" I asked again.

"I'll remember it as a vague dream."

"I'm going to California. LA," I repeated. "You can find me there."

"I won't remember it, Crystal."

"But you'll remember some of it, like when you _thought_ about me."

"Thought."

"Yes, do you want me to spell it out for you?"

"No, please don't."

"Well, I give you permission to _think_ about me as much as you want."

His face went red again, and I could see his mouth twitch. "You were the only one," he said. "If you must know."

"The only one what?"

He rolled his eyes, looked terribly squeamish. "That I...y'know... _thought_...about...after waking up."

" _Thought_."

"Yes."

"Even out of those you fucked in this world?"

"Yes."

"Oh. I would have thought that you would remember actual _sex_ with a witch much more than the brief time you and I had together."

"You'd think, right? I remember nothing about them when I wake up. But you—there are flashes of you. Maybe it's because you're...hot."

Breathe. Breathe.

"So, are you done asking me embarrassing questions?" he asked.

"You're providing entertainment. It's a long bus ride."

"How do you do it, Crystal? How do you remember? How..."

"I just always have." Pause.

"I've wondered about it. Wondered why I can't seem to lead two lives when the witches can. Maybe my mind would overload. Maybe that's what schizophrenia _really_ is, you know? A guy who was out fighting demons in his dreams and then lets himself slip, realizes he's leading two lives and then the two merge—and he goes nuts."

I squeezed his forearm, moved closer to him.

"You make me feel," he said. "You make me feel... No, that's it: You make me _feel_ in this world, Crystal Loradeen. I've felt fear here, terror, hate, anger. But never this. Never this. Also not out there."

"Don't go. I'll sleep all the way. Don't go." I moved my arm around his waist, rested my head on his chest.

"Ask me something," he said. "So long as the dream stays interesting, it'll last."

"How do you hunt them? How do you...kill them?"

"They can't be killed."

"You've never killed one?"

"I've killed plenty. But they always come back."

"They come back?"

"Every new dream is a new beginning. It's a mind game—them against us."

"But they always come back to life."

"Theoretically... Have you ever seen yourself die in a dream?" he asked.

"No."

"The theory is that if you die in a dream then you die in real life, right?"

"Yeah."

"But you've seen others die in dreams," he said.

"Yes."

"You see," he said, " _others_ die, but you never die. From the demon's perspective, he never sees himself die."

"How many times has Jack been killed?"

"Enough times. He's the most... _active_...of all of them. And the most determined. He's been around a _very_ long time, and word is he's taken a truckload of witches down."

"What about killing him in real life? Can't you just do that?"

"How?" he asked.

"Well, just _go_ there and do it."

"If I could remember it. Yes."

"Heck, _I'll_ do it."

"And go down for murder?"

"I don't care."

"You'll care when you're stuck in a max security prison."

"It could be done."

He said nothing.

"Lucien?"

"Don't call me that."

"Lucien."

"What?"

" _We_ could do it."

"Crystal, you lasted six months with him. It's unheard of. If you were an atom bomb of power when you arrived, you're only a few sticks of TNT now. How strong do you think you'll be when you face him again? Leave. Put some distance between you and him. You'll regenerate your strengths."

"I feel more powerful now than I did," I corrected him.

He looked at me skeptically. " _More_ powerful?"

"Yes." I didn't tell him about Loquacious Rob, and what I learned to do.

"Is it more powerful, or simply more knowledgeable? A person of sixty knows more than a guy in his twenties, but the guy in his twenties has more power. Power and experience are two different qualities."

I remembered the hypnotic command Jack had given me, and the pseudo-cold I'd developed the following day. Luke was right. I was weaker. More knowledgeable, yes. Able to use deeper strengths, yes. But weaker nonetheless.

"Follow your sense, Crystal. It's the only thing witches and us have in common. Why are you heading west?"

"Huh?"

"West, why are you heading there?"

"Call it a vision." I had no better answer.

"You're right."

"What do you mean?"

"When are you going to face the fact that you have _powers?_ Actual _powers_. Do you think you're going west on a whim? Something called you. I get called into worlds all the time. Could it not happen to you in a similar way? Don't change your route now."

_I'll kill him_ , I decided.

"Please. For me," he said.

"That's a low blow."

"Why?"

"Because...you're starting to mean something...to me."

"Only starting?"

"I was being polite."

"Don't be polite, Crystal. Look around you—you _rule_ this world. _You_. Be yourself."

_Be yourself_.

_You_ rule _this world._

The statement was a command. And now I was its slave.

And I acted.

My lips were on his before he could blink, my legs straddling him on the bus seat.

_You_ rule _this world._

_My dream._ The bus was suddenly empty. Only me and him, the vibration of the wheels pushing him up between my legs. He fought my shirt off, stared for a moment at my breasts.

His eyes are gems, blue sapphires as deep as lakes.

_You_ rule _this world._

But I didn't rule it for long. Because it wasn't long before he was ruling me.

He picked me up off of him like a feather. "Hey," I said, "I thought _I_ was in charge."

"Of your world, yes. But I'm not a creation of yours, Crystal. I'm _real_."

_I'm real_.

_I'm real_.

_I'm real_.

The words played like a chorus in my mind as he pushed me down into the aisle of the empty bus. Not even the bus driver remained, only a self-propelled machine that was flying through bumpy clouds. Luke took his shirt off...and my panties melted (not literally). "I've never gone for boys like you." His muscles rippled powerfully. Large lines of patterns streamed down both his arms.

"There's a first for everything." He kneeled between my legs while I fought with the jeans snap. _Don't wake up! Don't wake up! Don't wake up!_

He pulled them off me in a whoosh. "Do it fast, Luke. Please. I don't wanna wake up."

I was bare before him, only my bra on. He eyed the center of my legs like a hungry animal, lustful heat burning in his eyes. I wanted to see him, all of him, feel him enter me. He grabbed my ankles and yanked me toward him, licked his lips. He moved his head down between my legs, inhaled deeply as he got there.

Oh, gods, this is going to be even better.

His hands kneaded the bottom of my ass as I leaned my head back and waited to be tasted.

I grabbed his hair, _pulled_ him into me, wanting to feel his tongue against my moisture—

And then it was there. "Oh, _yes_."

One lone, long, majestic lap, slowly upwards, sizzling me, stinging me at the nub.

I gave a low, resounding moan, so deep and crushing that it sounded like the death throes of agony—

## -12-

—"Miss? Miss. Miss?" A hand at my shoulder, pushing me, shaking me.

"Huh? Hmm? Huh?"

"Miss!"

I opened my eyes, adjusted to the bright light of daylight and saw...a bus full of people. "Miss." An old black lady stood in the aisle, looking worriedly down at me. Her arm was stretched out over the empty seat next to me, her hand on my shoulder. "You looked like you were having a bad dream so I woke you. Are you OK?"

I wasn't so much angry at her as I was terribly sad. So deeply, deeply sad at the nothingness sitting next to me. _Gone._

"Miss?"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm fine. Thank you."

_He's out there_ , I thought. _I'll find you._

I hoped he was the reason I was going west. I hoped it all the rest of the trip.

But he wouldn't be. I was going west for another reason, a reason Luke was right to tell me to follow. A reason which would both open up the doors to the sheer magnitude of all my powers, as well as lead me back to Jack after five more months.

It would also lead me to the warehouse.

# PART TWO

# ~ Crystal ~

## -13-

I made it to Cali—LA. I think I was expecting to be hit by a bright light while leaving a bar like JT in _Phenomenon_ and then I'd be this supercomputer of knowledge and understand everything and be able to sense earthquakes days before they occurred... Alas, nothing of the sort happened.

The first thing I needed to do was find work. Two Gs isn't a lot in any city, but especially not LA.

I picked up a waitressing job at a small diner not far out from West Hollywood. It wasn't hard to find work. LA's full of restaurateurs willing to give out-and-down actresses and model wannabes a bit of work for minimum wage. Even though I was neither a wannabe actress nor a wannabe model, I was approached more than a dozen times for modeling gigs or to be an extra in a movie shoot. The girls I worked with (Gina and Big Bosomed Vera were the failed actresses, stuck in LA for the last five years without any acting work; Richelle was the model wannabe) were shocked and stunned at how I turned all the offers down. I sent the offers their way when I could, but I saw the looks on the agents' faces when they looked at each of the girls, "not attractive enough," "just not quite right," "not _exactly_ what we're looking for..."

It disgusted me.

All of LA disgusted me with its monomania focus on the perfect body, its porn industry (Model Richelle and Actress Gina had done an Adult Film in desperation; "Never the fuck again," each of them had said when I had asked them about it.) And the falsity—the two-faced backstabbers that lived there—was beyond comprehension. It was the type of town a man like Jack could thrive in, parasites living among parasites. But probably he shunned it because the connection of the average LAer to his inner psyche is dead. Deader than dead. As in, people in LA were about as spiritually / mentally aware as a rat. I didn't know if my abilities were spiritual, mental, or simply an evolutionary step. But LA's rung of evolutionary development was down in the second cellar anyway.

I hated the town.

But I did find friends, three good friends who were "normal" and talked about guys and hopes and who shared coffees and diet lattes (or salads in Vera's case) with me every morning before work. We went out for drinks at night, got hit on, got drunk, made jokes, had fun.

If it hadn't been for the nightmares, I might have forgotten my past. But they were with me every night.

You can run, Crystal...

Jack haunted me, with his dangling alligator tooth and his permanent gold-tooth smile. In the dreams, his image was ethereal, wispy, and he always stood at a distance. There were always clouds and lightning behind him. And there was another image: A floating female body in white wearing rags of tainted blood, black hair spindling down from a limp head. And his laugh, all-engulfing like rolling thunder. Black mountains and a cold, wet wasteland as Jack stood far away, watching me. _I'll find you_ , he'd say. _I will find you._

I wasn't sure if he was truly in my head, or if the nightmares were just regular dreams after a traumatic ordeal.

I dreamed of Tommy as well, looking down at him as his skin went clammy and blue, staring, asking him to get up, telling him I was sorry. I'd hit him, hit his chest and the rain would start falling and I'd still be hitting him, _thumping_ down with my tiny fists and hearing the _thoomp_ and squish of my hand every time it collided with his dead heart. And in the middle of all that, my eyes closed and blurry from the rain, my hair scraggling down the sides of me and sticking to my skin, my mind a whirl, crying, weeping, hitting...he'd wake up.

And then he'd grab me, hands around my neck and he'd start choking me. He has me on the ground and his blood eyes look down at me. I see the beetles under his skin, the blue veins of lifeless pallor, a drooping bottom lip while his body continues to strangle the life out of me and he ignores every call of mine for him to _stop! Tommy, stop! It's me! I'm sorry, stop! Stop! Stop!_

And then, just as I feel my larynx crush under his mighty grip, and I know—I _know_ —I'm about to die...

...I'd wake up.

Luke wasn't there.

Not in my dreams, not in real life. At least it gave me hope that the dreams of Jack were just that—dreams. Luke had said he only got called when I was in danger from a demon.

I tried to "call him" anyway, but I wasn't sure how that worked. What was he doing? Was he on a beach somewhere reading a book? Working out? Having sex with the purple-highlights chick? Out with boys screeching up the streets in hotrods? On a bike?

Was he dead?

I could barely create any inner worlds. And the worlds of my dreams were black deserts, always night, not even a moon to light up the emptiness.

_Jack's made me weaker_ , I realized.

During the day, I lived the life of as-close-to a "normal" girl as was possible in the first month. In my weakened state, I was blissfully unaware of what people thought of me, what they wanted to do with me. I did get impressions, but none as strong as before. I didn't know if a guy liked me or not, what he felt about me, if my friends were going to backstab me.

Slowly, the powers did start eking back as distance and time freed me from the parasitic powers of the demon Jack. I realized that Luke had been right. If I had gone straight back to Marfa and confronted Jack, I would have been eaten alive.

I must have indeed been an atom bomb of power when I'd first arrived in Marfa. And now? Would I ever get back to that state again?

Big Bosomed Vera got close to me a few times. Maybe someone else wouldn't have noticed it, but I felt it. Her ideas were sensual, calm, loving. She had thoughts about me that, if I had been that way inclined, would have sent tingles down my body, and made me shiver in places no man had ever done before. At least not in this world.

I'm not into girls. But I can't say I wasn't at least flattered by what she thought of me. (And _where_ she thought of it...) Her thoughts were "soft" if I can put it that way.

One night, the four of us were at a dive bar called El Chico on Sunset Boulevard, about six miles away from the Sunset Strip. It's far enough from West Hollywood so that drinks don't cost the same as an expensive dinner and not everyone's rocking a pencil dress and showing off her newly acquired silicone D-Cup. (It gets old, it _really_ gets old...) The place smelled like stale beer and a band played good ole indie rock. The crowd was laid back, everything from over seventy to barely twenty-one. This was our go-to place whenever we wanted to feel like we weren't really in LA.

Sexy Gina and Model Richelle were grinding bodies on the dance floor, making men and women slather. In their Adult Film stint (called _Wetly Wonderful_ ), they'd had to, uhm, "get to know each other" a little bit in the bedroom. Whereas they weren't into girls like Vera secretly was, they knew that sharing some tongue out in public would make men go nuts, and get them most of their drinks paid for each night. Gina and Richelle _never_ went home alone, and _never_ paid for drinks.

Vera and I were standing at a table with two beers in hand, music blaring and strobe lights pulsing. Vera is pretty short, probably five-four or so, but she's firm. Dark hair, exotic eyes. Very attractive. I never understood what these supposed "agents" didn't see in her as a potential actress. She's like a short Salma Hayek with the curvy-and-toned-up body of an Amber Rose.

I asked her to walk outside with me. I had been feeling her vibes for some time (even before starting to regain my abilities) and wanted to talk to her. I didn't know how to approach it, because I sensed that her desire for me was light-years away from only sexual. She had a crush on me. She liked me. _A lot._ Dare I say, I think she might have even loved me.

We stood outside for a second. The air was neither cool nor too hot, the only pleasant thing about LA. A big poster hung from an apartment block across the street saying "55+ community! Secure your property now!" El Chico's music blared loudly behind us, and I wondered who had come up with _that_ bright idea...

"Walk with me," I said to her.

"You feeling OK?" Vera asked.

I smiled warmly, sensing that mixed emotion of pain and longing from her, the kind where you hope someone might want to be with you but...you know they won't be.

I thought the best way to break this was directly, but to also be gentle. "Vera," I said, stopping. I looked down at her doe eyes, bright and brown and innocent. I sighed. "Vera, why aren't there any _guys_ like you?" I put my hand on her shoulder...and suddenly she understood.

Her round cheeks went red. She looked down. The waves of embarrassment coming from her were overwhelming.

"Vera," I said. "It's OK."

"You knew? No one knows. No one. I'm careful. I don't hang around—"

"Vera, stop."

"—with girls... _like me_... I don't..."

"Vera, would you relax?"

"I am relaxed. I am. I just... No one can know, Crystal. No one. My family...they're very Catholic. They don't... They wouldn't... What did I do? Was it the way I looked at you? Did I say something?"

"Vera, it was none of that."

"It must be. It _must_ be. I don't—"

"I can...sense...things," I said to her, not sure how she'd take it.

That stopped her. It stopped her cold. It stopped her so cold that I could hear the wind in my ears.

"Vera?"

"Like what things?"

"Things."

"Like _what_?"

I swallowed hard. I didn't want to tell her this part of my life. And it struck me that she wasn't the only one of us in a closet. "Like... _everything_."

"Every... _thing_?" The _thing_ she thought of as she'd said every... _thing_ was a little exhilarating.

"Yes." I swallowed, tried my best to smile. "Even...what you're thinking of...now." I looked away, not wanting to embarrass her. "I'm flattered, Vera. And...I wish you were a boy. Besides, if a boy ever did...what... Well, I just wish."

She giggled nervously, but I sensed alleviation coursing through her. Her face went hot red.

"It's unusual to find a closet... _lesbian_ —can I call you lesbian? Or is that 'politically incorrect'?—in LA."

"You can call me whatever the fuck you want, sister. Just don't tell anyone that I've fantasized about putting my tongue on your pussy." I couldn't stop laughing.

She was interested in my abilities, asked me questions about them. I asked her questions about herself, too. We walked for a mile or two just talking, leaving the other two girls behind. They'd catch a ride with someone they'd find tonight—it always happened, which is why we always brought Vera's car.

Vera's father was devoutly Catholic, and she was close to her family. They lived in Santa Monica and she was the only one of three sisters who still lived nearby, so she visited them frequently. "If they found out," she said.

"They won't find out. Not from me."

Again, that wave of relief from her.

"Although," I said, "if they love you..."

"I know, I know... I'll tackle it one day. One day I'll fall in love and, well... They'll have to know, right?"

When she had said _love_ —well, let's just say my heart bled for her. I put her under my arm and we walked like that some more, quietly. We walked another five minutes before she sprang the clincher on me.

"I must have a thing for girls like you," she said.

"You like semi-blondes with green eyes?"

"Of course." She fluttered her eyelids. "But that's not what I meant. I had a thing once with an older woman who could do the same things as you. At least I think she can. I mean, it almost felt like...she got into my head sometimes. You wanna meet her? She's got lots of books and ideas and shit like that. I mean, unless you've got it all figured out and all..."

_All figured out?_ "No, no. I don't. I mean, I don't have it all figured out. Not a bit. Not even in the slightest." _Go West._

"You wanna meet her?"

Nothing in my life has been a coincidence, not even meeting a lesbian who had the hots for me.

"Absolutely." My hands were shaking I was so anxious. "Yes, please, definitely. _Please_."

Vera looked at me suspiciously for a second. "You're in trouble, aren't you?" she said. "Because...of this thing...you can do."

I looked away sharply, saw a GMC truck racing down the boulevard and thought of Loquacious Robbie... "Yes," I croaked. "Yes, I... Maybe. It hasn't been...easy, that's all."

Vera took my hand, squeezed it tight. "OK. I'll call her right now."

Vera took her phone from her jeans pocket, dialed a number.

And got hold of a woman named Shira.

Shira Naiman.

## -14-

It's hard to describe beauty in the western world. We're given such a shallow concept of it by _Vogue_ and _Harper's Bazaar_ and _Fashion TV_ , that when real beauty hits you, beauty that runs so deep, you're stunned, left with your mouth open and tongue dangling.

Shira Naiman was one such woman.

Her beauty was sensual, both inside and out. She was of Indian decent, with long, straight, raven-black hair that spanned all the way down her back. Her eyes were massive and lustful, turned up just slightly at the sides. When she looked at you, you felt like she was seeing all of you. She was slender, and very tall, curvy where she needed to be. Her skin was a golden bronze that looked like the color of desert under a setting sun. She'd look as good as any other woman on the cover of _Vogue_ or _Elle_. But up close, she had the appearance of a deity. You can't capture that in a photograph.

I didn't know what to expect before I arrived. Sirvana, Jack's wife, had played with Tarot cards and hung up dreamcatchers. Their home had been quaint, with quilts on couches whose upholstery had long since lost its shine. Maybe I had expected something similar from Shira Naiman. What I got instead was a house in Beverly Hills. Vera had skillfully failed to mention that the woman she'd dated was a gazillionaire. Turns out she "had a knack" for locating investment opportunities, betting on the right Wall Street stock, pumping dough into the right movie. A knack, right. I didn't tell Vera that I probably had the knack myself if I tried.

Shira had become a quiet billionaire before hitting twenty-five. She was twenty-seven now.

I was stunned when we walked into the mansion. It had a spiraling staircase, a gargantuan pool outside, wall space fit for a modern art gallery, floor-to-ceiling windows, fireplace. I could only imagine what the master bedroom looked like, or the bathroom. _Probably there's a hot tub the size of a small pool in there._

I felt a resurgence of strength as I stood inside the mansion, as if the walls themselves contained magic power.

Shira greeted Vera warmly, _very_ warmly. They must have hugged for a minute. I tried to keep my mind to myself, but there was a clear lust between the two. An almost painful passion that carries you off and makes you think you're in love, but only leaves you both hurting at the end, licking your burned fingers, tending to the gashing wounds on your legs.

I thought of Luke, and missed him terribly.

I understood immediately why the woman and Vera had separated. The impressions I was getting in the mansion were strong, as if my power had never faded. _It's her_ , I realized. The woman called Shira radiated the strength of ten women like me. _She's powerful, so powerful._

Their history came to me as if I had personally experienced it, and with its memory came a myriad of emotions, good and bad, pleasant and maddening: They were both extremely passionate women. Their passion had carried them away. And then they had destroyed each other, using sex itself as a weapon, lies, hatred—it had a bad end. I felt bad for knowing so much, but even here—as we stood in the foyer with its marble floor and gilded banisters—I sensed the fervor of their desire growing as their bodies held onto each other, and they told each other they'd missed each other.

I looked away, doing my best to give them privacy.

"You are a fascinating creature," Shira said to me. Her accent was sweetly Eastern, with that faint touch of British in it which many people of India share.

I looked at her, not quite sure how to respond to being called a creature.

"Do you like the _energy_ of the room?"

_Energy, is that what she calls it?_ She was smiling lusciously, looking me over with as much interest as a man might look at a new sports car.

I didn't feel insulted by it at all. I felt a sort of...excitement from her, a curiosity that made me excited in turn.

She had on a long black gown, as if she were getting ready for a night out on the red carpet, and silk gloves up to the elbow. She puffed on a cigarette in a long cigarette holder, the likes of which Audrey Hepburn was famous for.

"You will learn to listen only when you want to," she said to me. "It is a skill _taught_ , not known by nature."

_Listen?_ I thought.

"Yes, listen, as you 'listened' to me and Vera right now." She grinned.

_She knows,_ I thought.

"I do. Don't be afraid." _And now she has sensed my nervousness_. "I will not harm you, I promise it. You are one of us. There are too few for us to feud with each other."

We both looked at Vera, who seemed mildly confused. Then the shorter girl smiled, after she realized Shira and I been "conversing" with our minds...

Questions I suddenly wanted to ask, pummeled me. Did Shira know of demons? Did she know of hunters? Was she ever caught by a demon? How do I find the boy called Luke? Can Jack be killed in real life (I remembered a comment by Sirvana that made it doubtful)? Why was Shira's own power so great? Would mine ever be that great? And what about the nightmares—would they disappear? Are they—

"Come," Shira said, "I've had Jackson prepare us a small lunch. Ronald shall bring it to us. We shall sit outside."

My hands were clammy and my legs soaked in nervous sweat as I followed the woman in black, Vera at her side, leagues shorter than the older woman. And yet they seemed to fit. _Opposites attract_ , perhaps.

"They do indeed," Shira cried out as she walked out into the patio.

Shit. I need to watch my thoughts.

"No, please don't. You have nothing to fear here. Trust me."

_As I trusted Jack_?

I almost kicked myself for having the thought.

She gestured me to a seat on the patio, facing a beautifully blue pool. When Ronald (who looked more like a Chippendale stripper than a butler) asked me if I wanted something to drink, I asked for something strong. "Real strong," I said.

But Shira shook a finger at him. "Orange juice, Ronald. You'll know why soon enough," she said to me.

As Ronald walked away, Shira's big black eyes followed the wiggle of his rump. And I saw the two of them—in the afternoon, the morning, last night... _Not a Chippendale, a bodybuilder, with a cock the size..._

Shira was looking at me, puffing on her Audrey Hepburn cigarette. Smiling.

She nodded at me slightly, smirked. "It's true," she said.

Oh, fuck.

Vera sat looking at the pool, unawares, perfectly happy.

It's probably best that she couldn't read minds.

## -15-

Shira would become both my greatest friend and my deepest enemy among the witches. I would come to both love and hate her completely. She would betray me and help me. She was ambiguous, caring, deceitful. Lonely. No man or woman could ever soothe that solitude inside her.

And she was powerful, so tragically powerful.

But above all, more than all of this, the thing that ran most deeply through her veins and made her heart tick and her lungs move...was her passion. She was passionate in the fullest meaning of the word and in all of its senses.

It is what would be her undoing.

She had three men working for her. Three exquisite bodybuilders who twitched and jumped at her every command. Jackson did the cooking, Ronald the butlering, Jamie the gardening and handiwork. From the first day I was there, I already knew she and Ronald were sexually involved. And as the days would go by, it would become clearer to me that she was indeed involved with all of these men. As well as a forth, Nolan Talwart, who only came by on occasion.

It would be many weeks before I would discover they were all under her mental control. Slaves, to a degree. In fact, _all_ of the negative things about her, I would discover only after I had come to love her as a friend, a tutor, a mother, a sister.

You forgive your friends anything. And so it would be with us. If her betrayals and her quirks had come early, I might never have stuck around to learn what I know today. And that would have been the greater tragedy.

I don't regret sticking with her. She gave me my life back, and ultimately led me to both Jack and Luke. She made me what I am today. Am I more powerful now than she had been then? It doesn't matter. It was never a competition between me and her. Between her and the other witches? Perhaps. But competition never existed between Shira and me. She taught me about the powers willingly, shared her knowledge with me freely.

She answered few of my questions initially, and told me that the knowledge would come to me on its own. "When you are ready," she said. She likened the knowledge to a Well, as Luke had done, and as I had personally experienced, and said that my access to the Well depended on my ability to hold my breath. "The deepest knowledge," she said, "is the kind you must be willing to die for, to sink to the bottom of the Well and possibly never come back for."

It all made very little sense to me at the start, and I felt like nothing more than an uneducated teenager. Although I was eighteen already, I began to understand the concept of old minds. Hers was so very, very old.

In our first meeting alone, the following day, she asked me about my life. I told her about Jack, the nightmares. "I sense you are holding back," she said to me.

We were sitting in her parlor, an elegant room with Victorian couches and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the pool. Shira was in a red satin nightgown, her legs tucked under her on the two-seater couch. She'd opened up a _1983_ Vintage red, and the wine bottle breathed on the glass table while a fire burned behind it.

What I was holding back, as she had pointed out, was the fact of Luke. I had skimped on the details of him, only mentioning he was a hunter. I didn't want to tell her about how I felt about him, and I didn't know why. I had simply _sensed_ it. So I had gone around the subject. "No, that's all," I lied.

Shira had exerted herself the day before so that I could understand the magnitude of her powers, but to try and read _every_ thought of mine at _every_ moment would have been too exhausting. I had also had my guard down, shocked by the aura of the house, which is why my thoughts had been such an open book to her yesterday.

Her thin black eyebrow cocked up as she took a sniff of her red wine. She grinned. "You don't have to tell me everything, Crystal. I have my own secrets as well." Her accent could disarm a bomb.

"What have your hunters been like?" I asked.

"My hunters?"

"Yes."

"I don't have any hunters, dear."

"Oh."

"I've never been in the clutches of a demon," she said. "My acquaintances have. You shall meet them someday...if you hang around long enough. From what they tell me, the hunter is not always the same. Karolyna—gods!—the woman has been caught up with more demons than a Tarantino film. And every hunter has been different for her, or so she tells me. Lavoya and Talya don't comment on their hunters. Maybe they've fucked their brains out and don't want to comment on it. Especially Lavoya, although I don't see why Lavoya would hold back on that. The woman is such a slut, she'd want to brag about it. Have _you_ fucked your hunter's brains out? Is that what you're holding back?"

"Uhm"— _cough_ —"No, no. I"— _cough_ —"haven't."

Shira took a deep swig of her wine, licked her lips slowly, stared at me. I felt desire stream off of her like hot fire. "But you'd like to, isn't it?"

I felt my face go red. Luckily, she didn't pursue it.

"Never mind," she said. "This isn't a night for us to delve into my voyeuristic pleasures. And if you'd like to fuck him, go right ahead. It's bliss in our worlds, isn't it? Fuck any man you'd like and no risk of diseases or pregnancy. The people out there would give their left toes for such a life." With Shira's posh and sophisticated accent, whenever she used the word _fuck_ it jolted me a little. "I'm sure Lavoya's had her fair share of hunter cock. The woman can never keep the center of her legs to herself. It hasn't seemed to harm her. Although, she doesn't rank too high on the Geiger counter of ability, you know. So she's not the best case to consider."

"Is that why you're so powerful?" I said. "Because you've never been drained by a demon?"

"Maybe. The entire concept of demons hunting witches has always been a difficult one to accept for me. If it hadn't been for my friends, I would never have credited the theory. But none of them have been taken while they've been around me. Maybe I give off demon malaria, I don't know."

"Your house," I said, "I feel stronger here."

"My energy is in everything in here. You will get up to this point as well."

"I appreciate it." I trembled with emotion as I said it to her. "You helping me. It's been...a rough few years."

"Well, Crystal, I'm not only doing it out of the goodness of my heart. I feel your power. It's deep. You are very talented. The house you see here..." She gestured to the ceiling. "I earned it. I sense things, and then invest in them. Pure black magic. I'll teach you all you want to know as best I can, and you can help me make money. I'd offer you a share, but I'm selfish. Consider it your tuition fee."

In all the time I would know Shira, she would always be honest with me. All Jack had ever done was lie and deceive. I could live with truth, even if it was delivered with a brick. I was grateful for the openness. "I'll take it."

She smirked, took a sip of wine. "Wonderful, darling. Wonderful."

## -16-

I was of no use to Shira in my current state. I felt powerful in her house, but I was a dithering wreck most of the rest of the time outside. It was as if the nightmares were sucking the life energy from me. _You can run..._

It had been five weeks since I'd left Texas, one week since I'd met Shira, and five weeks since I'd had a decent night's sleep.

The first thing Shira taught me was how to erect walls, walls visible only to myself, in my world. When the walls were solid enough, she showed me how to create an entire world within those walls. "An imagination within an imagination," I said.

She smiled proudly.

Learning the skill was no easy task. It wasn't a matter of taking a mental brick and placing it on another one. There were no spells or potions, no meditation or yoga. It was a matter of her telling me it was possible, and then me diving into that Well of Knowledge to figure out how.

There is no Hogwarts or Peachville High or Vampire Academy for us. Life is the teacher. Scaling the ten-foot wall.

It took me a month to do it.

I began to understand the analogy to the Well. It wasn't an analogy so much as an actual entity. I would actually _dive_ , in my mind, under water. Black water that went down deep and in which I could drown. The sensations were the same. But the water was words and knowledge and screams and history and memories embedded in genetic cells and a common mind and the universe and the earth and all these things in one.

But it still felt exactly like water you could actually drown in.

Just as I had been creating worlds in my mind and not known it as a kid; just as I had been moving things with my thoughts when I'd been angry; so had I been diving the Well already for many years. My tutelage took the form of showing me what I was already doing, and putting it within my conscious control. Necessity had made me dive in the past, and necessity would make me dive now.

It seems you can "dive" and come up with nothing. It seems the knowledge comes to you when you need it most desperately, when you're hungry enough for it. More aptly, when you're willing to die for it. Only the strongest survive.

Six weeks in LA became seven, eight. I had blue bags under my eyes from the nightmares and the resultant lack of sleep. Vera and Sexy Gina offered me sleeping pills, but that was another thing Shira had forbidden me from doing—taking drugs of any kind, medical or street. "A mind like yours," she said. "It can't handle it. Other witches, sure. But that's because they're dense as a rock. Your mind...has potential. It won't deal with it. It'll short-circuit."

It was something I had always sensed inside me (probably my early encounters with the Well), and was why I had never experimented as a child. Gods know I had reason to, all that bullshit they say people end up taking drugs for—depression, anxiety, peer pressure. I had all of the above. And yet when I was offered my first joint at thirteen (after Raymond's finger incident), I turned it down.

I also went to some rough schools. Drugs were always around— _always_. And Gina and Richelle were also always on E or speed or something. Vera did it occasionally. I just never got into it.

"Which is why you're still here," Shira said gravely. "If you had taken it..." She drew a finger across her neck like a throat getting slit. "Or," she said, and then put a finger to her temple and twirled it around. "Loony bin. _Them_ —let them do it. Their minds are weak. But yours— _ours_ —it's made of complex circuitry, millions of connections that they cannot even dream of." Shira always referred to non-witches as _Them_ and _They_ or _The People Out There_. "You'd blow a fuse. Your mind would blow. As for hard liquor, well, I guess you'd survive. Alcohol is not a mind-altering drug. But stick to wine and beer, at least while you're under my tutelage, OK?"

I had no problem with that. I had never been a big drinker, either.

And then, a month after having been with Shira, I knew I had made it. I had erected a wall and dreamed of flowers and peace and fluffy things. I had made it so well that I overslept by six hours and missed my shift. My boss, Mr. Tornico, was pissed. I fluttered my eyes and kissed him on the cheek and then on his bald spot. "What—you fall in luv oh sumtin?"

"Something," I said.

Gina and Richelle and Vera thought the same.

I was in heaven for the rest of the day, screwing up orders and dropping coffee. My head was in the clouds.

"Go, go, gettim outta ya system. Fuck 'is brains out and then be here tamarra _on time_ , woodja? Yer no good ta me taday. Go!" I kissed Mr. Tornico on the head again ("Damnit, ya keep kissin me like dis all day and your new boyfriend's not gonna keep ya fuh very long. Go!") and I left.

I had only one person I wanted to speak to, to share my victory with. I wanted to go see Shira. We hadn't arranged to meet until later tonight, and it hadn't crossed my mind that she might have guests.

It was here that I met Talya.

## -17-

I had a key to the house.

I want you to do something for me. Yes you, Dear Reader. I want you to remember a time when you were _really_ happy. Like, ecstatically out of your knockers _contented_. Maybe it was falling in love or getting laid the first time—whatever it was. But it needs to be one where you were so freakin _knocked out with joy_ that you were perhaps a little...distracted. Got that moment? Good. That's what I was like walking into the foyer. Distracted. In the clouds.

I didn't hear the murmuring.

It wasn't loud, no one was having sex in the parlor—yet. But there was moaning involved. Male whispers and groans. Perhaps if you listened really carefully, you might even hear the soft smack of lips touching and the gentle moan of a woman as she got ready to have herself undressed and then found by a hungry hand.

I didn't even realize it was happening until I was already two steps into the parlor. And then I did see it.

Ronald and Jamie were on the right-hand couch, Ronald's hand deep inside Jamie's pants while their lips grappled. Ronald bit Jamie's bottom lip and Jamie writhed, moving his body back and forth while Ronald's weight pressed down on him.

Shira and a woman I hadn't met were on the opposite couch, seated, their lips touching, a glass of wine in each of their hands, the other woman's blouse cut low. Part of the blouse had been moved aside, but what little breasts she had were not showing. She had brown hair and freckles all over her skin, looked to be in her fifties or so, a skeleton of a woman, but not frail. You could see the strength in her despite her lack of bulk.

Her large eyes had caught sight of me as I'd walked in and I felt the anger pour from her like hot lava. You don't need to be a mind reader to understand the look she gave me.

I made an abrupt about-turn—

"Oh, Crystal, don't go," I heard Shira say.

I stopped cold, turned slowly to face them again. Ronald and Jamie didn't stop their movements, and Ronald's hand was moving even faster inside the other man's pants.

"We were just finishing up," Shira continued. "Right, Talya?"

Talya got up, cold fury in her eyes. She straightened her blouse and pushed down her skirt which had been raised to high on her thighs. Looked me over. _If looks could kill._

Her jealousy hit me like a swarm of gnats.

"Aren't you going to introduce us?" the older woman said, looking at me but talking to Shira.

Shira sat back languidly on the couch, legs stretched out in front of her on the ground, totally relaxed. "Crystal, this is Talya. A friend of mine."

"More than a friend," the older woman said. Her voice was husky and commanding. "So you're the one. Shira cannot shut her mouth about you these days." Her eyes examined me very closely. "I understand now...the attraction. Even I would try my hands at the likes of you." Her eyes raked every part of my body, top to bottom. But I felt none of her thoughts, none at all.

"Oh," I started, "Shira and I are not—"

"Not _yet_ ," the brunette said angrily. Maybe her hair had been lush once, but it was stringy now. "It's only a matter of time with Shira. Only a matter of time." She turned her head to Shira on the couch. "Isn't it, darling?"

Shira seemed perturbed.

"I really didn't mean to interrupt," I said.

"But you did." The older woman stared down at me, eyes hard and lips set.

"I'll just be on my way."

"No!" Shira snapped. "You don't go, Crystal. Talya's was a surprise visit anyway."

The older woman stiffened, pushed down on her blouse by her stomach. Looked over at me with disgust. When she walked past me, she whispered in my ear quietly, "It's only a matter of time, little one. She'll eat you alive that one." And then she left.

Her stilettos smacked against the marble floor as she walked out, sending echoes like ricocheting bullets against the walls.

The front-door slammed.

Shira stood. She looked dazzling, dressed to entertain, her hair a wonder of black. She put her glass down and snapped her fingers at the two men. Ronald moved his hand away from between Jamie's legs. The butler's face flushed red when he saw me. "My apologies, Ms. Crystal." He stood.

"It was nothing, Ronald. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Nonetheless," he said, "it was rude of us. We are unaccustomed to having such a regular...guest."

"Well, Crystal will be with us for a _long_ time, so we should watch ourselves," Shira said to him. "Right, dahling?" She looked at me.

I nodded, still unsure of where things were heading with us in that early time.

Jamie stood, zipped up his pants. He was extremely well built, as were all the men. His bulge was still large. He had an almost womanish face, despite all the heavy bulk of tight muscles on him.

I felt a powerful desire in the room. My own? Shira's? One of the men's? I didn't know, but it was there.

"Come," Shira said, "we have work to do, things to discuss." She put her arm around my shoulders and we went to sit by the pool.

I asked her if Talya was her girlfriend and all she said was, "Later, later, tell me why you're here so early."

She never did answer that question. Not on this day at least.

She was ecstatic to hear about my victory. There was fire in her eyes as I explained how I had overslept. We got straight into tutoring, focusing on how to create stronger and more powerful walls.

I wanted to ask her about Luke. Could I create a world in my mind and have him visit it while I was awake? Could the wall keep Jack out and Luke in?

I missed him.

I missed him deeply.

As the days went by, she noticed that I was becoming distant, not answering as promptly. She became almost impatient with me, and wanted to know what was going on in my mind.

I had gotten good at making walls, and I was hiding my thoughts of Luke from her. I had begun to think of him quite seriously now. And whereas she might have picked up on the thoughts earlier, the ones I was having now were of an entirely different ilk. They were actually physically painful.

I was sleeping well. What a relief. But at what cost? Jack was gone. But so was Luke. I had considered dropping the walls in my sleep, but was too afraid to do so. _You can run..._

"Tell me," she insisted one day. "You're driving me absolutely bonkers with your distraction."

I opted to play it vague. "It's a boy..." I said to her.

Her muscles eased off immediately, and she leaned back in her pool chair. "Ahhh, the hunter."

I didn't say anything.

"They are weaker than us, Crystal. Sex? Yes, of course you can do that with them. But they don't even know what their other hand is doing. They're _slaves_. Worthless fools. Leave the hunter be. Find yourself a dastardly warlock somewhere and light up the skies with your lovemaking. You might as well be chasing a beast if you chase a hunter. Animals."

I decided to change the subject. "You and Talya. You are...lovers?" I tried to discover again.

It was one of the rare moments when I sensed loss coming off of Shira. Her own walls were made of steel, and she rarely let anything through unless she wanted to. On the first day I had been here, she had let me in on the emotions between her and Vera so that I could become aware of her power, and of my own increase in power inside her home. But that I felt her loss now was a slip on her part.

"She's too old for me," she said about Talya.

"Do you love her?"

"Love? Pfft! There is no love for our kind, Crystal Loradeen."

But I could feel it on her. I could feel it seeping through the cracks of her inner walls like water against a failing dam.

Love is a difficult thing to hide. I think none of us can really hide it, a weakness we all share in common—humans, us, hunters. All of us.

The next time I saw Talya, her power hit me with a shuddering bump. It was also the first time I discovered that in _this_ world—the "real" world—witches have all the powers I had ever suspected. Making something float or fly or setting off a thunderstorm in my dreamworld was a cinch. It's what had always made it fun for me growing up. But aside from the occasional falling coffee cup, I had never considered the fact that, in the real world, such powerful skills could also be possible.

Talya showed it to me.

She showed it to me in the most violent of ways.

It was five PM. Shira had asked me to come by as early as possible to help on some investment predictions. I had started doing this with her as soon as my nightmares had come under control. I finished up work as early as I could and skedaddled over to Shira's mansion.

I waved to Jamie in the garden (he was shirtless, and always a pleasure to look at) and I shouted out to Shira from the foyer. I didn't hear her, so I thought I'd head to the library upstairs to read some books and wait for her like I usually did. She had a massive collection on the occult which always kept me interested. It was on my way to the library that I saw Talya coming out of Shira's bedroom. Her hair was mussed, her face red. "Early again today, are you? Do you not realize she has a life of her own?" Her words were sharp, biting. "You weren't due for another hour. Why are you here?"

I had no idea the woman knew so much of my schedule. (And it was clear that Shira hadn't informed her of me needing to be there as early as possible today.)

"Listen... _witch_ ," Talya said. I felt a mental finger on my shoulder as if it were really there, but she was twenty feet away. I stumbled back from its force.

She laughed at my weakness. "Such a child. Such a child."

Talya walked closer to me, started speaking more softly. "I _know_ your game with her. I've played it myself. She's mine. Mine! If you take her, little girl, we'll kill you. We'll sever your head and keep you alive to watch it rot."

I was too stunned to respond.

And when my wits came back to me, I kept my mouth shut out of deference to Shira. I _could_ have told Talya that I simply wasn't into women. Simple enough. And if I had been, I _could_ have told her that I wasn't a "homewrecker" or whatever the apt term would be for this particular situation. Talya was indeed Shira's lover, no matter what Shira tried to convince me of otherwise.

But it was out of my own respect for Shira that I bowed down to the battle.

"You think I don't see your mind?" the woman said. "You think I don't _sense_ your desires?" I felt her mental hands groping around in my head, trying to get into the worlds I was hiding within walls. I had started reconstructing my lake again—a new lake like the old one, a place I could sit in when I had free time. "You want her, we all know you do."

We.

"Get out of my head," I said.

She laughed, soft and gentle. "It's up to _you_ to keep me out of your head, little girl. Your walls are flimsy..." I felt a brick breaking in one of those walls. "Soft." One of them trembled. "See? I could shatter them with a soft blow of my lips. Stay away. Stay away from Shira. We know you are trouble."

"Whatever you're seeing is a dream. I have no such desires." Was she confusing my love for Shira as a mentor with something deeper?

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such an amateur. Such...a child. She'll _put_ those desires inside you, child. If she wants you, she'll take you. All she needs is the seed, and the seed is there. Do you know nothing?"

She cackled mockingly as she walked down the curved stairs, leaving me shaking.

And that's when it happened, that's when I felt the force of a witch's ability to _move_ things...with her mind.

And the thing she moved...was me.

I was lifted off the ground. My toes fought to stay on the floor but eventually I was airborne. Talya kept walking blithely down the steps, her dress trailing behind her.

I started to float higher and higher, over the railing—

"Oh, gods— _no!_ "

"Yessss," Talya said. "Oh, dear sweet mercy— _yes._ " I made it to the chandelier, saw the floor below from a dizzying height.

Talya just kept walking away, to the front door, as if nothing were happening.

I began to scream.

"Yessssss."

My body started turning, my feet moving up, my head moving down. I saw the black and white tiles and realized— _She's going to drop me on my head._

"Yessssss, oh yes. Oh—"

And then I fell.

## -18-

"OH DEAR GODS!" I heard Shira's howl from the second floor just as my head reached millimeters from smash-point.

And I suddenly stopped.

All the blood rushed to my head. My hair fell in a cascade onto the floor...and I stared at the hard tile that I had almost hit. The tile which I _didn't_ hit. I was an upside down statue, hanging in midair.

"HOW—DARE YOU," Shira screeched. "HOW—BLOODY—DARE YOU, WOMAN."

I felt my legs move down slowly, as if being pushed by gentle hands. And then I was safely on the ground, quivering with terror at what had just happened. _Talya tried to kill me. The bitch just tried to kill me!_

What ensued was a veritable war of witches, and I would end up digging deep into the Well and scaling that ten-foot wall to find powers within myself that I had only read about in books.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. "IN _THIS_ HOUSE. HOW...DARE YOU!"

A lover's feud broke out, crimes of passion—with fireworks. Before I knew it, Talya had been smashed against the front door, flung there by invisible hands...and it cracked. Shira came running down, wearing only the bottom part of her underwear. "You vile, _vile_ woman." She snapped her hands around the older woman's neck and started to strangle her. I watched as the life drained away from the brunette, her skin turning blue and her eyes beginning to roll.

Shira looked ghastly, an angel of death. "She is _my_ student."

Talya couldn't speak, but I felt her thoughts: _She is your lover!_

The woman was convinced Shira and I were having an affair. It struck me that perhaps she was trying to find a reason as to why Shira had never declared her love for her, and I seemed like a good scapegoat.

The foyer began to rock, the floor trembling. _Great, an earthquake on top of it all._ It didn't strike me then that the quake was being generated by the anger of the two witches.

Talya's hands began to go limp around Shira's wrists. _She's dying,_ I realized. _The woman tried to kill me...and now she's...dying._

I didn't think. Didn't question. Didn't ask or wonder _how_ to do it. I simply _dived_.

... _down down down into the Well. Down... She cannot die. Whatever happens, she cannot die. Cannot. Cannot. Cannot..._

I saw images of the past, Loquacious Robert, Raymond, Jack and the blood in the lake, the spiders on my legs. _And I survived all of them. All of them. How?_

By just _diving_...and finding the answer—

I found it.

And I acted upon it.

By the time the deed had been done by me, it was over, and I was stunned at the results, just as stunned as I had been after Loquacious Rob had driven his car off the side of the road after I'd slammed that thought into his head.

I felt drugged, caught up in the whirlwind of the events...and what I had just done.

_And what_ did _I do?_

Then I saw it.

Shira was all the way back to the stairs, lying down against them in an ungainly manner, moaning. "Oh, gods," she said. "Oh, gods..." She was almost out, dazed. _Did I just throw her there...with my mind?_

And Talya was on the ground on the opposite side of the room, choking, gagging, spitting, holding her throat for dear life. "YOU—HAG," she shouted. Was she shouting it at me or at Shira? "BOTH OF YOU!" Ahh, that answered my question. "HAGS. FUCK EACH OTHER'S BRAINS OUT FOR ALL I CARE. FUCK THEM GOOD AND GODDAMN DANDY. GROW FUCKING COCKS IF YOU HAVE TO. HAGS. HAGS! WITCHES!"

Did I not just save this woman's life?

And did she not just, uhm, try and fucking kill me?

Talya eventually managed to get herself up, still choking and coughing. She stumbled out the door. Turned once more to face us. "You're _lucky_ this house is protected," she screamed at Shira. "Lucky. Or I'd burn _both of you_ right now."

She disappeared.

I got up rapidly and went to Shira, held her head. Her eyes were rolling around, dazed. "Shira. Shira. Oh, fuck, Shira, I'm so sorry. Shira!" I screamed for Ronald, Jamie, anyone.

Ronald arrived and took Shira in his arms. There was pain in his eyes. But no questions about what happened. _As if it's happened before_.

The fourth man, Nolan Talwart, was actually _Doctor_ Nolan Talwart, an out-of-practice general practitioner who'd lost his license some years ago. Roland called him to the house and he tended to Shira and told me she just needed some rest. After a few hours by her side, and after she had long since fallen asleep, I decided to head home.

Ronald stopped me before leaving. "It's best you stay here tonight," he said.

"Why?"

"The house," he said. "It's...protected. Talya...has moods. They will settle. But tonight—it's best you don't leave here." _Does he know we're witches?_

I had my doubts that Talya's mood would settle.

He took me to the guest room (a room fit for the princess of a small country).

Before he left, I asked him, "Ronald, how much do you know...about...us?"

He frowned, confused. "Miss?"

"Us—you know—Shira? Witches?"

"Witches?"

A sudden and blinding thought struck me in the head. It was Shira's voice, talking to me within the confines of my mind: _He knows nothing. I speak_ through _him when needed. Please don't push him anymore._

I understood suddenly. It was here that I began to appreciate their state of minds. It was here that it began to dawn on me that... _she controls them all._ But only when necessary, it seemed. It had been necessary for her to control him to tell me the house was protected. And now? He probably simply thought I was spending the night.

Zombies.

And did she do this while they were having sex with her?

All of it was too much to deal with. Too much.

_Is she a demon?_ I wondered.

But I was becoming more powerful around her, much more powerful—the acid test of any demon.

She was no parasite. She was a witch, like me.

It was a restless night for me. No dreams, no nightmares, just restless.

I was disillusioned the next morning, disillusioned by life, by the evil I had seen, the jealousy. Surely it was better to just be like "them"—the humans Shira seemed to hold in such low regard?

But Shira settled my mind the next morning with a statement so pithy and profound that it took me an entire day to finally catch onto its ramifications.

She spoke the truth. The absolute truth about our kind. It was a lesson I didn't want to learn or accept, but one which I couldn't deny. One which I had observed in myself many times before.

She and I sat at the breakfast table the next morning, saying nothing, hearing the glasses cling and the knives clang on plates. And then she told me: "We're witches, Crystal. This is who we are. And this is what we do."

She said nothing else.

But the words echoed in my mind the entire day.

That evening, I went out with Vera and Gina and Richelle. The previous night's events at Shira's place had been too much and I needed a break. The girls flirted with guys and danced and drank beer. Got drunk. Gina slapped a dude for groping her ass and then had her tongue inside him faster than I could blink.

We're witches, Crystal. This is who we are. And this is what we do.

I imagined a bunch of witches at this bar. The slap would have been a lightning bolt, the kiss a raw fuckfest right in the middle of the dancefloor.

_Who am I?_ I asked myself. _Who am I?_

Richelle giggled at a blond dude with biceps the size of Mount Rushmore, then she rubbed her ass against his cock.

_A witch would have nailed him to the wall and straddled him midair_.

The thoughts were horrid, terrifying, villainous.

I'm not that person. Not.

We're witches, Crystal. This is who we are. And this is what we do.

I nursed a beer and said very little. Vera asked me if everything was OK. Truth is, I missed Shira's company. I missed seeing Ronald and Jamie sneaking a feel amongst themselves when they thought no one was looking. I missed learning from her.

As painful as it was to admit, I had even gotten a thrill out of being turned upside down midair and being dropped to the ground. Because I had survived.

And I had gained a power out of it.

_I threw her across the room_ , I realized.

I tried to do it now, tried to make the table move under the beer... _and it did_. I stopped it quickly, and asked Vera a question. "Was there a tremor yesterday?" I asked her.

She looked at me quizzically. "Tremor?"

"Yeah, a small earthquake."

"No. You feel something?"

I remembered the sound of the chandeliers as the room had rocked under my feet. "Thought I did," I said.

We're witches, Crystal.

Call it genetics.

Call it divine intervention.

But I was a witch.

There was no fighting the truth. And I could either learn to fight my battles as a witch, and save _myself_ from being dropped from thirty feet on my head. Or I could simply die.

I had had too many close calls for an eighteen year old as it was.

I needed to learn what I could do, and I was learning with Shira. Thrown in the deep end, yes. But I was learning, and I was becoming powerful.

I hadn't forgotten my vendetta toward Jack. My intention was to kill him. He had destroyed my world, and many others' worlds as well. To kill him, I'd need to be a lot more powerful than I was.

Being turned upside down from thirty feet and then dropped was nothing compared to how Jack had treated me.

I began to smile.

"See something you like?" Vera asked me, looking at the dancefloor.

"Yeah, I did." The smile grew bigger. "Vera, I think I'm gonna head on home. I'm beat. I'll catch a cab."

I downed my beer and headed out, hailed a cab.

I was asleep almost as soon as I hit the bed.

I dreamed of Luke.

Only, it was no dream...

## -19-

..."I'm happy to see you," I say. There's concern inside him, I feel it like a fist.

" _You missed me?" Luke asks._

_The question sends shivers through my stomach. "I'm..." I don't know how to word this. Are we even in a relationship? "Yes, I missed you."_ More than you can imagine.

We're on a green hill, looking out over a city in the distance. It could be LA, but I know it isn't. It's a conglomeration of whatever cities I've seen in real life, a put-together of whatever I've considered beautiful. There's no purple smog in the distance, only buildings. The air is warm on my skin, a gentle breeze sending goosebumps up my exposed legs. I'm wearing a sundress today. Luke's in tight jeans and a tank, his ink gleaming across his arms like magic spiderwebs.

Every fiber in my body wants to take him and kiss him, push him down on the ground and hold him still. But there's something I need to know first.

" _Why didn't you come to me?" I say. "I called you and called you and called you."_

" _I heard nothing."_

" _Well, can't you just visit me, for fuck's sake?"_

He smiles, and I know I sound like a stupid girl in love, as if we were just sitting for coffees somewhere in the real world.

" _You think it's funny?" I say to him. Gods, I've missed him. I've missed him so much it hurts._

" _It's been agony without you, Crystal, if you must know. If I had known where you were, I would have come to you."_

" _I'm in LA, I told you."_

" _But we're not in LA now, are we?"_

No, we're not.

" _We come when we're called," he says._

" _But I_ did _call."_

" _The call didn't reach me. Were you in danger?"_

" _I was dangled near a chandelier and dropped on my head!"_

His eyes go wide. "A demon?"

" _No, no. A...witch."_

" _A...witch?" A grin starts to form._

" _It's not funny. Scared the shit out of me. I could have used your magic sword or whatever it is."_

" _In the dreamworld."_

" _No, no. It happened in real life."_

" _Fuck," he says. "I heard witches could be rough but..."_

" _Rough is not the word. Backstabbing."_ And I'm one of them.

" _So, no demons."_

" _No."_

" _I don't make the rules, Crystal. In the past, I've only appeared near a witch when she's been in the clutches of a demon, just about to have her throat slit or sacrificed into a fire."_

" _I wasn't in danger on the bus. You came to me then."_

" _You wanted to turn around and go back to a demon in Marfa."_

" _Only after you spoke to me about it."_

" _Still," he says, "I kept you away from him. Besides, I've told you that things with you work a little differently."_

" _So, to see you, I have to get caught by a demon?"_

" _Please don't."_

" _This sucks," I say. Now I_ really _feel like a little girl. "Was it really agony? Not seeing me?" Yes, I'm fishing for compliments._

His mirth settles to something more serious. "Murderous. Even in the daytime, there was a sense of loss there, but no memory. But when I went to sleep, and woke up in a battle, I remembered you. Don't think I didn't try, Crystal. When the battles were done, I tried. I'm breaking rules all over the place for you. But there was nothing. I couldn't find you. You tried to call me? I tried to call for you as well. I've never done that before. Didn't work."

" _And when you weren't in battles? Couldn't you have searched for me then?"_

" _When a witch calls, we're in this world. When she doesn't... Nothing. A good night's sleep. No worlds at all."_

" _Maybe I_ will _get caught by a demon."_

" _I have something to tell you, Crystal. Something massive. Something I know you'd like to hear."_

" _I only wanna hear it if it has something to do with you and me being together."_

" _How's your time been in LA?"_

" _You're changing the subject."_

" _No, it's related. I heard about your...friend. Shira."_

" _Oh—what, in like a secret hunter's meeting or something?"_

" _Yes." He looks out over the city, legs crossed underneath him. "I guess you could say I've been promoted."_

" _What, they gave you a bigger sword?"_

" _You like mocking my sword, don't you? That sword has seen the blood of many a demon, and saved many a witch."_

" _It's a magic sword, isn't it?"_

He laughs. "Actually, no. Sorry to disappoint you."

" _Then why not a freaking glock or a .45 or something? And_ don't _tell me you don't make the rules."_

" _I don't, but I know that doesn't answer your question. You have to slice them just right, cut up through their viscera and let them—are you sure you wanna hear this?"_

" _On second thought, no. I think I have the answer I needed."_

" _You can cut their heads off as well. It's hard to cut a head off with a bullet."_

" _Yeah, yeah, I get it now. So tell me about your 'promotion.'"_

" _I was called to a gathering, much like I've been called before to things. When I 'arrived,' there were a hundred or so hunters there."_

" _That's a lot."_

" _I had expected more. I thought there were thousands of us. But these were the 'elders' you might say. Those who have proven themselves. The gathering was in the desert, and the lead hunter—huntress, actually—was a woman. Long black hair, dressed in a matching high-collared black dress that spanned down to her feet. Tallest woman I've ever seen."_

" _She must have been sweating like a pig."_

" _It wasn't hot," he says. "It was the desert—but it was a dreamworld. As a new initiate to the Order, I was given a briefing by the leader. Her name is Aasiyah._

" _Apparently we have been hunting for centuries, maybe millennia. There is a collective mind which travels forward when a hunter passes on, and we imbibe the knowledge he had and share in it."_

" _The Well," I say._

" _Not quite. It's different with us. Your kind has access to secrets, the way the world works, the truth about gravity and matter—"_

" _Matter?"_

" _Yes. Please don't interrupt. There's a lot to cover."_

" _Sorry."_

" _Your kind—witches—have access to a knowledge so deep and powerful that, if the secrets were exposed to all, the world would go into mayhem. But no secrets are ever exposed to all. They get exposed in time, each generation of witches learning more, getting stronger._

" _More powerful witches access deeper truths, the substance of life itself._

" _I will never have access to that knowledge, Crystal. Our knowledge is no Well. It's more like a cloud that floats through us, a part of our souls. The knowledge I have access to is merely the knowledge of how to hunt demons...and protect witches. It is a knowledge passed down by ancestral hunters, their mind consciousness passing into us when they die. We are given access to this inner world of yours because it is the only way we can interact with you without losing our minds. It's the only way we can...kill...without consequences._

" _We can face death in the dreams, and simply wake up._

" _The gatherings... They happen regularly, on an as-needed basis. The time of it is quite fascinating, people falling asleep at different times, but the dream itself happens independent of that time._

" _Only those hunters who have proven themselves are called. This weeds out the weak ones, and allows only the best to take part in decisions._

" _I was pulled aside, Crystal, by Aasiyah. She flaunts a sword longer than mine on her side, and a vicious battleaxe on her back. Aasiyah, Mistress of the Hunters. Her eyes were pure black. The power flowing from her was enough to nearly make me swoon. She welcomed me, but her eyes were dark and somber as she spoke."_

He stops.

" _Luke? What did she say?"_

" _She spoke to me...about you, Crystal. You are the key...to the demons. You have access...to levels of the Well... It's unheard of. It's, as I said, almost demonic."_

I bristled. "I'm not a demon," I say.

" _But you are close to them. Something connects you. Something. You are the key, Crystal, to destroy them."_

This was all a little sudden for me. "It's a little hard to stomach."

" _Follow your path, your inner sense," he says. "The answer will come to you. You're still early in development, but no witch before has had the power you do now—or so Aasiyah says. I don't know what powers you have."_

" _I threw someone twenty feet back with my mind."_

Luke looked at me, shocked. "In the dreamworld?"

" _No. Out there." I pointed at the city, almost as if it represented reality._

Luke swallowed.

" _I scare you," I say._

" _No, you don't scare me." His jaw tenses. "Not you...as such."_

" _Then what?"_

He inhales deeply, doesn't answer. "The demons," he says, "they were witches themselves once. Only witches can become demons...after the witch dies. It takes centuries for her to reappear as a demon, and she takes on a different form, the preferred one being male. Few witches know of this fact. Probably they take on a different form to keep it that way. You don't have access to the historical knowledge that we do.

" _The rituals, the murders on the part of the demons—they are a recruitment method, you could say. It's an effort to weaken the witch until she gives up her will to them, and finally becomes one of them."_

" _Er, what? Raping witches turns them into demons?"_

" _Rape is a tool of war. So is torture. Pain. And finally...death. By the time the demon has broken the witch down completely, destroyed her world, sucked her powers away, she becomes suggestible, tired, weary. And he offers her the seed of an idea, the idea that she could become powerful again, gain her inner worlds and magic once again. By the time they feed her this idea, she's a breath away from death, and utterly powerless."_

" _They feed her lies," I interject._

" _Not entirely. The witch_ must _choose. She knows she is on the verge of death, knows she has lost everything, and the scent of power becomes overwhelming. The more powerful she had been as a witch, the more powerful she will be as a demon. But she must_ choose _the Dark Gift, as the demon calls it._

" _If she does, she vanishes for hundreds of years. A sort of purgatory in reverse, perhaps. And when she returns, she walks among us—humans—draining power from everything she touches, smiling, grinning..._

" _When she returns, Crystal, now as a demon, she—or he—has a magnetic pull for existing witches. Witches are drawn to the demon, calmed by him. And finally ensnared by him."_

" _And tortured."_

" _Yes. And more..."_

" _But the hunters..."_

" _...fight them," he finishes for me._

" _Did she tell you why?"_

Luke looks perturbed, chews a nail.

" _What is it, Luke?"_

" _I...I... I got the feeling Aasiyah knew the answer when I asked her that question, but she didn't tell me. It...bothered me."_

" _Maybe you guys just love us."_

He looks at me. Softly, he says, "Maybe."

I rub his leg absently, and feel him tense up. "Everything OK?"

" _To answer your question: You don't scare me." He puts his hand over mine. "But how I feel about you does."_

It's the last straw that pulls me to him.

I can't hold back anymore.

Not anymore.

The statement is a sledgehammer to my head, driving me toward him with all the force of every planet and sun and star and moon in the sky. Our lips collide and my hands tug his shirt up faster than I can breathe.

Electricity fills me...

...and the earth starts to rock. The ground trembles while my lips devour him, get lost in the haze of his beautiful mind and wonderful body. His hands are all over my back, down lower...

He lifts my dress, slides his hand down between the hills of my butt and pulls up.

I groan like an animal, feeling the throb down below as it threatens to overwhelm me.

_I fight with his belt buckle, yearning for the feel of him thrusting_ _inside me—no patience, no thinking, no mercy—_

But he stops me.

Our lips are still smashing together when I feel his hands snap against mine...and hold them there, preventing me from fulfilling my desires.

" _Don't stop me," I say. "Don't stop—"_

Tasting lips. Noses rubbing. Tongues touching. "I must, Crystal. I must." I struggle against his hands and—

" _Crystal, wait, please."_

The heat in me annihilates all sense. My hair falls onto his face and my insides tighten to the force of ten megaton clamps. "I—must—have—you," I beg.

He stares at my desperate eyes for a long while.

And then his right hand slides around me, between my legs—

" _Oh, gods, yes. Oh..."_

His finger is bliss, is memory, is joy, is heaven.

" _Oh, yes. Oh, dear sweet mercy..."_

There is no gentleness in the hand.

Time disappears. The world disappears. The sun, the grass, the sky, the city. Nothing. Only his blessed finger, violent and forceful, maddening and almost painful...

" _Oh, gods—"_

The climax rails me viciously.

The fireworks which explode in my eyes singe retinas and I'm left reeling, dangling, unsure where left or right is.

The world shatters and we're in the heavens, flying, bursting, stars colliding and suns exploding...

Dazed.

Lost.

A little afraid.

But Luke is here, underneath me, his finger gently caressing my satisfaction while my body goes limp over his and I simply...breathe.

I rest my forehead on his shoulder, breathe in the scent of his musk. His arms engulf me, and he holds me tightly to him, my breasts pressed down against the power of his chest.

That was intense _._

Dangerous _._

I'm stunned, floored, flabbergasted at what just happened.

" _You and I," he says. "We can never be, Crystal. It's...forbidden."_

My entire body goes cold.

I try and rise but he holds me against him. "What...do you mean? Shira says witches have sex with hunters all the time."

" _Sex. Yes. Flings. It's frowned upon, but it happens. And they move on."_

I push him away, feeling insulted. "That's what this was to you now? A quick fling?"

" _Crystal, don't misunderstand me. Of course it wasn't that."_

" _Then tell me what it was."_

" _Sex is not forbidden," he says. "But...love is."_

## -20-

" _This Aasiyah, I'm starting to dislike her," I say._

" _She's a powerful huntress."_

" _But she told you not to be with me."_

" _Yes."_

" _How did she know?"_

He looks at me with regret in his eyes. "We have a collective mind, Crystal. They might not know the details, but they know the facts. I cannot hide anything from them, even if I try."

" _Did she give a reason?"_

" _No."_

" _And yet you touch me now. You touch me, and I let you." I feel stupid._

" _Crystal, please. That's not why I touched you." He puts his arms around my shoulders, kisses my forehead sweetly. If he carries on like this, I might actually forgive him..._

It doesn't take long. Only three or four kisses and I'm his. "I hate you," I say. But I don't, not at all. "So what will you do now?"

" _About?"_

" _Me."_

" _I'm doing it."_

" _So you're just going to break the rules."_

" _Yes."_

Sweet. "Fine by me. You said you had news I'd be happy to hear. So far I'm not so happy. I preferred it when you were bottom of the food chain."

He tells me what he heard of Shira. She is known amongst the hunters as an extremely powerful witch. It was considered amongst them for many years that she might be the one to bring the demons down, but she never got herself caught by one, never met a hunter. And so they waited. And then I arrived.

" _And I'm supposed to be the one?" I say._

" _Yes."_

" _Like_ The Matrix _."_

" _No. Theoretically, there could be more than one. Let us say that you are the first. My opinion, there will not be any more in our lifetimes. So, yes, perhaps like_ The Matrix _."_

" _Just call me Neo," I joke._

He doesn't comment.

" _And what am I supposed to do?"_

" _What you're doing. It will come to you. Just follow your sense. You outlasted Jack for longer than anyone else. It is unheard of."_

" _And they know this through you, that whole collective mind thing."_

Again, that flash of regret in his eyes. "Yes."

" _Relax, I know you can't hide shit from them. Maybe I'll teach you how to build up some of these walls I've learned to construct."_

" _Walls?"_

I tell him about the skills I've picked up. A few times he laughs in disbelief. But finally, he says, "I'm dating a real freaking witch."

" _Dating?"_

His hand squeezes mine. His eyes tell me everything without him having to comment.

" _Man of my dreams, huh?"_

He doesn't smile at the joke. I feel the tragedy of it as much as he does: Unable to meet, unable to walk along the street holding hands, unable even to...remember.

I'll find you _, I promise myself. The walls I have built up around my thoughts prevent him from hearing that thought._

" _Dating," I repeat. "I like that."_

He squeezes my hand tighter.

" _I will kill Jack," I say. "In real life. I've decided."_

He looks at me, bites a nail. "I know," he says. "But not only him."

My mouth starts to drop as I process the statement.

"All _of them," Luke says. "Only you can do it...with our help."_

My mouth goes dry. "Wh—what?"

" _The demons," he says. "You're expected to kill...all of them."_

" _You're fucking kidding me."_

" _No."_

I'm too shocked to comment.

" _Leave it be for now," he says. "You're not ready yet."_

" _When will I be ready?"_

" _You'll know. You'll reach a point of strength where it will be undeniable for you." Pause. "Crystal..." His voice is laced with concern._

" _What now?"_

" _The news I wanted to tell you is this: Something happened in my real life that I had dreamed about, and I remembered the dream. Something recent."_

" _What happened?"_

" _Someone...died...in real life. And...I remembered her. A witch. I remembered. And now, you, and since the gathering...the memories... I don't forget_ everything _when I wake up now. I... No other hunters have had this happen to them."_

" _Who died?"_

His lips try to move. "I...I can't tell you. I'm unable to. But that's not the point. Witches die all the time. The point is that I remembered, and that she materialized in my real life, near where I stay. But...I'm starting to remember...bits and pieces."

" _Do you remember_ me _?"_

" _Not as such. I remember a girl with green eyes that I keep dreaming about, but nothing more."_

My hands start shivering from excitement. "Can you tell me where you live now?"

He drops his head. "No." Pause. "No. But...I'm questioning things in real life now. Questioning...the dreams."

" _Just don't go to some quack who'll prescribe you drugs and dull your mind because he thinks you're crazy."_

He laughs. "I spent too many years with an out-there kind of parent to ignore the supernatural in life. Don't worry, I won't go to a quack."

" _When?" I say too enthusiastically. "When will you remember all of it?"_

" _Crystal, I_ don't _remember as such. But...I'm in doubt when I wake up. I don't know where it'll lead, if I'll end up crazy. I'm just telling you the facts."_

" _But you remember_ something _."_

" _In a way, yes."_

" _That was your news? The one that would make me happy?"_

" _Y—yes?"_

My grin is so high up my face I feel my skin wanting to stretch off (not about the dead witch, of course; about the fact he's starting to remember). "I'm officially happy." I kiss his lips, his nose, his ears. His lips again.

" _Wait," he says._

" _I'm done waiting." Kiss, kiss, kiss._

" _No, please"—kiss—"I must finish." Kiss._

" _Fine. Be quick."_

" _There are others," he says. "Other witches who have withstood the strength of demons. There is one still in Marfa. Aasiyah told me of her. Roxy, I think her name was."_

" _What?"_

" _Roxy. You've met her?"_

And then the memories come to me in a rush. The books she fed me, the connection she and I had, how her touch had calmed me. "Yes, I've met her. I should have known."

" _Known what?"_

" _That she was a witch. I should have sensed it. Why didn't I with her?"_

Luke's eyes glint with a deep sadness. "I'm full of bad news today, aren't I?"

" _What do you mean?"_

" _Not all witches go all the way down the rabbit hole, Crystal. The witch either agrees to get_ some _power back as a parasite by becoming a demon, or is saved by us, or... Well, there is the rare case of the one who is neither saved by us nor who takes the choice of getting her power back by becoming a demon, and yet survives. I thought they all simply died. It seems some don't. Roxy was... She went all the way down, tortured, beaten, other things. And still she held onto her integrity and chose to remain powerless and die, instead of seeking the blinding urge to gain power back."_

" _The power is like oxygen to us," I comment. "Losing all your power is like drowning."_

" _But it's not only power she gets back. She gets...eternal life."_

" _As a parasite," I say._

" _Yes, but life nonetheless."_

" _It's no life for me."_

" _When you're facing death, I think you think differently, and using your analogy of it feeling like drowning, we know of only two witches who've gone all the way down and survived in the real world: Jack's current wife Sirvana, and Roxy Waldbaum. They both chose to drown._

" _Roxy doesn't know she's a witch. She holds onto a semblance of the power, perhaps a lingering sixth sense of some sort, but she has no clue. The knowledge is inside her. But she's locked it from herself. Sirvana is a different story as far as we can tell. Her mind is scrambled eggs now. And whatever powers she_ might _display are all under the control of Jack anyway._

" _Aasiyah didn't go through the details of what Jack did to Roxy, but I've heard of his methods. That she and Sirvana survived... They were both very powerful once as well. Roxy more so, because at least she got away from him. In the same league as Shira perhaps. Tremendously powerful. But not...as powerful as you. You still have your powers, after all."_

" _Why doesn't Jack take her again?"_

" _What for? Roxy's practically human now."_

" _Why doesn't she leave Marfa?"_

" _Why are you in LA?" he asks._

" _For Shira."_

" _Did you know about Shira before?"_

The sense, the lack of coincidence. _"I get your point."_

" _Your powers are so infinite, and the kingpin of them is this sense you all have, this drive that takes you to places and opens up doors. There are no coincidences for a witch."_

" _She's in the lion's den—Roxy."_

" _Yes."_

" _Gods. Wouldn't it be easier to tell the witches what's going on?" I ask. "Get their support?"_

He looks away. Looks at me.

" _Spit it out," I say._

" _Witches can be..." He bites a nail. "...a little delicate. They don't hold us in very high regard, and when pushed in the wrong direction... You say you were dangled near a chandelier?"_

Uhm, right. _"Never mind. I get it."_

" _Few of the hunters themselves even know. Only those who've proven themselves get invited to the gathering. It took me ten years to know of this, and now I'm telling you. We've tried to tell witches, but witches are not too different to people. When people get told the world's about to end, they go home and pop open a beer and watch a movie on TV and forget about it. A woman like Shira is the most difficult to convince. She's never been in the clutches of a demon. Telling her about this plot would be like telling a Deep South Republican that gay marriage is OK. She'll think you're crazy. Telling weaker witches would only spark a frenzy._

" _No, we're on our own. You, the hunters...and we hope Roxy will come around. She's lost some of her..._ witchiness _. She's a little more approachable now."_

" _That's a cruel thing to say."_

" _It is, I'm sorry. But_ you're _not witchy, not at all."_

" _You're kissing up to me now."_

" _I am."_

" _I must contact her."_

" _You must do what_ you _sense is right. We are at your mercy, Crystal. There are only a hundred of us. Maybe we could call on more if we needed, those at the bottom of the food chain as you put it. Don't be rash. Listen to that drive within you. This is Aasiyah's advice."_

" _Aasiyah."_

" _Put your feelings for the woman aside. She's a military genius."_

Contacting Roxy now is rash. I know this. "I should stay in LA for now," I say, feeling the sadness of it as the words leave my lips. "You're not in LA, are you?"

" _I'm unable to tell you that."_

" _I know you're not."_

" _You must forget about us, Crystal. For now at least."_

" _I want to be with you, Luke. I want it more than...anything." I run my finger down his chest and ask him the question that's been burning inside me since he took his hand from between my legs. "Why is love...forbidden?"_

He sniffs, clears his throat. "It's a distraction. But it is especially forbidden...with you. Because you're so important. You must understand what's at stake here."

" _I understand it. No need to belabor it."_

" _I don't make the rules."_

" _Aasiyah does?"_

He looks away. "Yes."

" _And you feel those rules because of this collective mind goody."_

" _Yes."_

" _And what puts_ her _at the top of the food chain?"_

" _The same that puts you on top of yours—she's the most powerful of our kind."_

" _Then wouldn't I have called her instead of you? I mean, if I'm supposedly the most powerful witch in the universe, wouldn't I have attracted the most powerful hunter?"_

" _Yes, that's the way it's always been."_

" _So that makes you the most powerful."_

" _Not necessarily. I said it's the way it's always been. There's also never been...one like you."_

" _Or you," I mumble._

" _What?"_

" _Nothing." Pause. "I don't care what she says. I care about you."_

" _And I care about you."_

" _Well, problem solved. You told me I should follow my sense, right?"_

" _Yes."_

" _And that it will lead me to whatever I need to do to kill Jack and the others, right?"_

" _Yes."_

I don't ask another question.

I follow my sense.

Completely.

## -21-

Straddled above him on the grass, I bend down and kiss him. "I like it when you break the rules," I say.

His hands tighten around my waist, and my knees push inwards against his hips. I push myself down against his hardness, squirm backwards to build up friction.

My body thrills at the sting of his shaft as it twitches up against me.

I roll back against him again, feeling his desire underneath his closed jeans. "I want you," I say. "I want you...completely. In this world"—I kiss him—"and the real world."

" _Crystal."_

" _Yes."_

" _What I have now are vague images. More than before, but still vague. I'll...forget."_

Sadness from him hits me like a hammer. "I know," I whisper. "But you might also remember."

The idea seizes me that he might never remember; or if he does, that he'll end up schizo as he first predicted.

" _I'd give the world to be inside you—_ really _inside you," he says._

The statement melts all logical thought in my mind, and my mouth hunts his like a ravenous wolf. I don't realize I'm doing it, but I slide my hand down between his legs...and die when I feel the strength of his cock.

I look down at him, and he's perfect.

I manage to get his pants open, and hot fluid gushes out of me as I slide his moist shaft outwards and feel its warmth between my fingers.

" _I want you," I say. "I..._ need _...you. You might not remember, Lucien. But I will."_

" _I can't promise you I'll be faithful, Crystal. Not in the real world. These are dreams—"_

" _Shhhh." I put my finger on his lips, meanwhile maneuvering the tip of his shaft to just between my folds. "This is no dream. And so long as you're faithful to me in this world, I don't care."_

He gives the slightest nod. Waits.

When I slide down onto him, both our groans fill the skies like gunfire.

Small stones cut into my knees as my body takes over all of my thinking and I writhe down on him, swaying my hips back and forth, feeling the slide of his massiveness as the delirium hits me.

We slide into another world, a world within a world, and in that world I see his biceps gleaming from sunshine, hear his heart as if I were inside his chest, sense his pulse like a beating drum.

_I feel_ his _ecstasy as my smoothness glides over his shaft, letting him in deeper, and then pulling out again. I feel my own heat around his cock, feel how tight I am around him, feel his desperateness to hold back inside me._

" _Don't hold back," I say to him. "Don't hold back." The dream could end at any moment, any moment. "Don't hold back, Lucien, please."_

I sense the waiting explosion at the tip of his cock, him holding back with all his might and strength and power. "Please, Luke"—every nerve sizzles like electric fire—"let go."

Let go.

Let go.

Let go.

He does.

My knees soar off the ground when he rams so far up inside me that I almost choke.

His arms crush my body down to his as he thrusts upwards and claims me.

Liquid heat fills me until my eyes glaze over from euphoric madness.

_He detonates over and over inside me, his growls the sound of a million savage beasts as they rip the firmament from the sky with their teeth. I'm so taken by_ his _experience, that I almost miss that my own orgasm is happening now as well._

It sneaks up on me like a devil. But when it arrives, it's on me like a thousand warm hands, a million wings fluttering at my skin as thrills and bumps and shivers assail me.

We spin, tumble, fall and feel the rush of air. Lights surge past us in frantic patterns of gold and green and reds and yellows.

The moment lasts a lifetime.

But even a lifetime must end.

At the end of it, I see him fade. "Don't go," I beg. "Don't go."

And so the dream becomes a nightmare.

" _Don't forget," I say. "Please, don't forget."_

He disappears from below me, until all I see are my legs apart, my knees on the ground, and nothing but dust and patches of grass underneath me.

An unbearable sadness fills me from my toes to my ears. A sadness so profound that it feels like acid water flowing through me, eating my insides and tearing my nails out.

I slide my hands between my legs, still feeling his heat on me; fall back on my haunches; bow my head.

In my dream, I begin to weep.

I'll forget, _he said..._

...when I woke up, my eyes were wet.

# BOOK II

Thanks for reading book one of two in the _Mind Games_ series. Book Two is already available wherever ebooks are sold. It is called _Her Mind Games (Mind Games #2)_.

Please feel free to send me an email if you wanna chat. My email address is rachel.dunning.author@gmail.com.

Love,

Rachel

# Get Free Books!

Sign up for my mailing list and get an email every time one of my books is released. Books are usually put up for free, or at heavily discounted prices when they are released. **You will NOT be spammed!**

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP NOW!

http://mailinglist.rdunning.com/

Also by Rachel Dunning:

Her Mind Games, Mind Games #2

Johnny, #1 Johnny Series

Losing Johnny, #2 Johnny Series

Taking Johnny, #3 Johnny Series

Finding North, #1 Naïve Mistakes Series

East Rising, #2 Naïve Mistakes Series

West-End Boys, #3 Naïve Mistakes Series

Deep South, #4 Naïve Mistakes Series

Red-Hot Blues, Standalone Novel

Like You, #1 Perfectly Flawed Series

Know Me, #1 Truthful Lies

Find Me, #2 Truthful Lies

Need Me, #3 Truthful Lies

Christmas Comfort, #1 Hot Holidays Series

Easter Sundae, #2 Hot Holidays Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Harder, #1 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl Nerds Like it Faster, #2 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Deeper, #3 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Longer, #4 Girl-Nerd Series

**For news of upcoming releases, visit:**  
<http://mailinglist.rdunning.com/>

