The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(88)
Author: Kim Harrison

“You’re a wicked trickster,” I said, but it was the Goddess speaking, and Jenks moaned. Through her, I could see Landon’s betrayal, see his thoughts like the aura spilling from his soul. It had been my hair in the charm. He’d done this knowing she’d eventually take me over, destroy me like the splinter had destroyed Bancroft. He’d convinced Bancroft to do this same thing, I thought, remembering that same glint of satisfaction in him at the top of the FIB building. He murdered Bancroft as surely as if he had slit his throat. God, I had been stupid!

It was Landon, I suddenly realized. Landon was the one helping the Free Vampires eliminate the undead. Landon was a master of wild magic, and he was using them to kill all the master vampires. Bancroft. Trent. All of us were pawns in his game.

“Rachel?”

But a pawn could become a queen if she reached the end and came back again.

Wavering slightly, I turned to Ivy, feeling the Goddess’s attention fracture a hundred different directions to leave me free to breathe and speak. “Um, maybe?” I whispered.

Jenks darted up, frantic. “Rache, she’s in you!” he said. “Kick her out!”

But I couldn’t. She had dug her claws in deep, enjoying seeing mass in a way she never dreamed was real.

You are as I, she thought. But so small. A single identity that holds thousands of thoughts instead of a thousand thoughts holding a single identity. Mass can’t do this.

Her grip on me loosened more, and I took a breath, then another. Jenks’s wings clattered, and I looked at my hands. They were shaking, but I felt the awe of the Goddess in me. They were beautiful in structure, diverse in intent. I’d never noticed.

“I don’t believe it,” Landon said, and my head snapped up. His hatred was etched into his features, and I felt a tiny shock as the Goddess only now linked the facial expression to the emotion. He’d expected me to be taken as Bancroft had been. He’d expected me to be snuffed, destroyed, my single identity holding a thousand thoughts ended—and that pissed her off.

“You’re not wicked. You are ill,” the Goddess said through me.

He opened his mouth, and I smacked him.

My hand met his face in a resounding crack. A burst of ever-after struck him, and he was flung backward, slamming into the wall between two stained-glass windows.

Bis dropped down to Ivy, and Jenks took to the air. I knew my aura was wrong. I couldn’t feel Bis anymore. Unable to stop, I walked to Landon cowering under a window. The Goddess’s eyes were whirling in me, in the line, in the spaces between. The feel of the wood against my feet was exhilarating, and I could feel the pressures shift as my weight was pulled into the earth. It was glorious, and only a fraction of the Goddess’s eyes were on Landon as he gaped at us.

Us? the Goddess thought, a fragment of her awareness seeming to enfold upon itself at the concept of two individuals acting as one.

“You are an ugly dream that should be dreamed no more,” I said, then cocked my head, delighting in the sound of my voice coming back from the rafters. Like errant thoughts, the Goddess mused, finding common ground in how sound moved between empty space and solids.

“Rachel, no!” Jenks cried out as I reached for Landon, and I managed to pull my hand back from the Goddess’s reach to throttle him. “Please, let her go,” he pleaded as he hovered before me.

“You are a worthy dream,” the Goddess said to Jenks, forgetting Landon as I turned to Ivy. She was crying, and I’d never seen her so beautiful. “And you,” the Goddess said through me, and Ivy blinked fast, catching back a sob. “Us. I like us,” the Goddess said aloud, and I felt a smile grow.

“You’re a trickster singular, Rachel Morgan,” the Goddess whispered aloud so she could hear her words come back from the ceiling. I was starting to sound crazy, and Bis had gone chalk white. “Your purpose is to make balance. Mass has meaning through you. I will dream this further and will find my errant thoughts.”

No! I thought. But it was too late, and the Goddess had yanked not only my thoughts but my body into the line.

Suddenly I existed only as a thought, one eye among thousands, but a thought that could think a thousand more, unique and alone, able to be I, and us, and we. Around me was the Goddess, her trickster thoughts aligning within me. She knew how to end dreams that were unworthy of being dreamed.

She’d let me help.

Nineteen

I was both in the ley line and not, and there was no protection bubble to mute the sensation of energy flowing through the spaces in me. Around me were the collective thoughts of the Goddess, emotion being the easiest thing to comprehend. Oh, I could hear her thoughts, thousands of them all at the same time fluttering at the edges like purple wings, but comprehending a single voice was like picking out a single note in a full orchestra. Emotions were easier, broader sweeps of feeling—and most of the Goddess was pissed.

But parts of her are frightened, I thought as a blossoming of her fear gathered closer to me as if drawn by my own unease. Suddenly it became easier to pick out single frightened thoughts, mystics perhaps, fragments of a collective mind. Doubt, fear, anger, they whispered until I felt sorry for her.

Like a failing tide, the Goddess’s fear fell away, replaced by her own thoughts of compassion for the small dreams that she’d been dreaming, lost and alone. The sudden switch from fear to compassion was a shock, and as soon as I realized it, her compassion fell away, replaced by the Goddess’s own thoughts of amazement that something could exist outside of her, that unlivable mass had found a way to support independent thought.

Suddenly I realized I was attracting the parts of her that resonated with my current mood. The thought to use that to my advantage crossed me, and I wavered as the Goddess’s own crafty thoughts of trickster wish fulfillment coated me in an unreal slurry. Reeling, I felt as if I was caught in a roller-coaster nightmare and couldn’t get out. It was like trying to walk through a morass where the ground kept shifting.

Here! the Goddess thought suddenly, and when her eyes turned from me, I clawed my awareness out from under it all. My thoughts!

But the Goddess’s elation too soon mutated into confusion. They can’t hear me, rose a thousand laments. They can’t hear me!

Struggling to think through her noise, I scraped together the thinning remnants of the Goddess’s resolve. She wasn’t thinking three dimensionally, but four. I need to have mass, I said, trying to impress upon her that her straying thoughts couldn’t hear her because they weren’t in space, but mass. We have to leave the line as they did.