Chapter 92

“Final boarding call for Pioneer-Blue, flight 105.”

Shit.

The gate check-in counter is in sight. I dash to it like I’m in an Olympic relay, ticket in hand. With the other hand, I clutch the duffel bag slung over my shoulder to keep it from clobbering me as I run.

I weave my way around other passengers, milling about during their layovers or filing to their own gates, and I race past emergency workers trying to revive Ethan. He’s lying on the floor of the airport, muddied and limp.

Ahead, and just to my left, a little boy is watching. He looks small and scared. There are grass stains on his jeans. A bike is laying on the ground next to him.

“Last call for flight 105.”

“I’m here,” I say, shoving the ticket in front of the worker.

She radios to the flight crew and sends me down the jetway to board.

I follow the jetway tunnel into a crowded subway car, already speeding down the tracks.

Ansel’s sitting alone, slumped over.

“Can I sit here?”

I don’t wait for his response. I sit in the empty seat next to him and put my bag in my lap.

“I’ve been riding this all day,” he says.

A man with headphones in his ears gets up from his spot and walks past me, bumping into my knees.

I glare at him, but he takes no notice. “Where’s your stop, Ansel?”

“I don’t know,” he says. His expression is muted and his voice is dulled.

“Are you okay?”

He continues to stare ahead. “I think about the same.”

“You’re lying,” I say.

He doesn’t answer. The subway car clicks over the tracks.

“Let’s get off at the next stop.” I don’t like this - this feeling of eternity stretched out before me. A

He nods slowly, not really lifting his head.

The subway car begins to slow and the brakes screech, but we’re not at a stop. Out the windows, there is only darkness.

“Why are we stopping,” a woman asks to Ansel’s left.

That’s when we a high-pitched shriek from another car. It stands my hair on end. Ansel jumps up.

‘Wait,” I say, but he’s already heading towards the commotion.

Our car bursts open. An enormous bearman crawls through, growling.

People are screaming. He slashes through them, left and right. Ansel’s golden wolf lunges at him, going for his neck. He’s tossed off with one swipe of the bearman’s paw and slung against the window.

Ansel doesn’t whimper or yelp. He shakes off the stars he’s probably seeing and charges at the bearman again.

But now, the grizzly’s focused on me. I walk backward through the car, stumbling over someone’s purse strap on the floor.

I want to cry out to Ansel, but when I look, he’s busy fighting off two more bearmen who have appeared out of nowhere.

The giant creature stalking me is growling, drooling like a Rottweiler, and taking its sweet time, drawing out the pleasure of his hunt before the kill.

I start to tremble, finding that I can’t shift into my wolf to protect myself.

We’re just playing this out like actors on a stage. I’m not able to control anything, and I don’t think Ansel is lucid dreaming with me.

My heart’s beating like it’s real. It feels real.

I crouch down, curling myself into a ball, as I brace for the attack.

“Karin.”

Everything but Ansel and I are in a freeze-frame.

He runs to me, helping pull me up off the floor. His eyes look alive again.

“Let’s get out here,” he says. He muscles open the subway car door. “I know how this one plays out.”

We step out onto the tracks, into the dim tunnel. It doesn’t look like it’s for subway cars. It’s an old rail tunnel with wooden tracks. Ansel walks ahead of me.

“How did it play out?” I shiver, but my heart rate is beginning to return to normal.

He hops over a broken beam.

“Everyone dies,” he says.

“Very Shakespearean.”

The tunnel is hollow-sounding, like we’re in a cave. The tracks seem to spread on and on forever.

Ansel continues leading us deeper into the shaft, without looking back at me. “Sometimes it’s my mom I can’t save,” he says. “Lately, it’s been all you.”

“Except, you did save me,” I say. “Really save me, I mean. Not just in a dream.”

The tracks in the subway tunnel begin leading downward, to a pit. At the bottom of it - complete darkness.

“Sort of,” he says. “I didn’t finish the job. Thankfully, someone else did.”

Ansel stops walking. His hand goes to his shirt pocket. He pauses.

“I’m going to take full advantage of this.”

He pulls out a cigarette carton and opens it. There’s a lighter lodged inside.

“What the hell is that?” Obviously, I know, but I’m dumbfounded.

“No lungs here,” he says. He extracts a cigarette from the carton and lights it. “No cigarette either. Remember that.”

I glare at him. “How could you ever smoke? After all the time you spent sick!”

Ansel ignores me. He takes a drag and closes his eyes, exhaling slowly. “I wobbled a bit on a self-destructive path. The smoking didn’t last too long - well, except for the odd hit of a cigar once in a blue moon -”

I open my mouth to protest.

“And I know that’s not the brightest, either,” he says, cutting me off. “At any rate, it’s been a long time, but I still dream about it every once in a while. As you can see. Usually, it’s an anxiety dream. I’ve wrecked my health from it and I wake up with my chest aching.”

The squeaks of rats echo around us, as they scurry in the shadows.

“When was the self-destructive path?”

Ansel pauses to take another puff. “Probably around the same time you were doing lines of coke and edibles at house parties.”

I put my hand on my hip. “You’re not going to let that go, apparently.”

He chuckles at me and drops the cigarette on the ground, stubbing it out with his heel.

“I got sick after you left,” he says. “I almost died, or so I’m told.” He keeps his face and his tone nonchalant.

“You mean - five years ago?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “But Father had just become King, so that saved my life. Suddenly, I had access to the royal physicians.”

“That’s why you said this is your second time on a ventilator.”

“Yes.” He rubs the back of his neck.

“You never told me any of this,” she says.

Ansel shrugs. He kicks at the rocks in the railbed.

“I want to know more,” she said. “About your life after I left.”

Ansel starts pushing ahead again. “Basically, I started to focus on getting stronger. Having good doctors helped, and I also got way into exercise and training.”

“I can picture that,” I say.

I smile, but the somber look on his face makes me wish I hadn’t.

“My father kept egging it on, too,” he says. “And I began to feel powerful, I think, for the first time. And I was. But, I was empty.”

He turns his head back to me. “So, I had my brief love affair with cigarettes.I tried on some other vices, too. And I dated around, but you already have some idea of how that went.” He blushes slightly.

“Not really,” I say, marveling at the sight of him blushing.

“None of them were you.”

“Oh.” I stand there, stupidly. I don’t know what to say - don’t know what to do - that won’t somehow be wrong.

It’s funny, standing next to someone you know so well. Every freckle. The way he laughs. The way he fits into you.

But there’s so much you don’t know, and you’re standing close, but you’re worlds away, and you don’t know how you fit anymore.

Ansel clears his throat. “Tell me how this dream control of yours works,” he says. “Can you just, you know, snap your fingers, and take us some place?”

“I can try,” I say. “I might be able to. I was stuck in that subway car with you, so I don’t know.”

“How often does that happen,” he asks.

“I don’t really play around with this enough to know, but I have a theory.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m exhausted from last night,” I say. “And this takes a lot of energy.” I scratch my nose. “But, I think it was both of us. Your brain was kind of stuck, so I couldn’t get past it.”

“There’s a flow - like a back and forth flow between us,” Ansel says, staring past me.

“Maybe,” I say, shrugging.

He claps his hands together. “Try something with me?”

I sweep my bangs out of my eyes. “What?”

He smiles a little mischievously. “Can you give me the reins?”

“What do you mean?”

I begin to hear the squeaking noises again. I look around nervously for the source, before turning back to him.

His blue eyes beam at me. “Share some of your dream sorcery,” he says.

I chuckle and fold my arms like a genie. “Your wish is my command.”

Ansel gives me a less-than pleased look.

“I don’t think it works that way,” I say, putting a hand on my hip. I’m annoyed that he’s annoyed.

He exhales and straightens his posture. “None of this is real,” he says. “So, just rewrite the rules, because there are none - not actually.”

The squeaking starts up again, but this time, it’s coming from right beside me. I yell and leap to get out of the way, just as a monster rat with yellow fangs jumps out at me. Ansel kicks it, sending it squealing and flying into the air, before it lands on the ground with a thud. Dead as a doornail.

“Fine,” I say, shuddering. “Anything to get out of here.” I’m scared another fanged rat will appear and want to cling onto Ansel, but I force myself to stay rooted where I’m at.

Ansel grins - at my expense, no doubt.

We both try to concentrate, and then he snaps his fingers.

Paris.

We’re looking out at the Seine River, in the shadow of Notre Dame.

“It worked,” he says, taking it in. “This is our date.”