Free Ambushed by Dean Murray Page B

anything big strong emotions had been
fueling me during the experience.
    Acting
more on a hunch than anything else, I let the frustration stay and
added in half a dozen other emotions. Respect, dependence, a slight
dose of fear, all of the emotions that I'd come to associate with
Taggart went into the mix and then rather than just letting the
filaments spool out slowly on their own, I pushed in
the odd way that I'd learned made things happen for me inside the
dream.
    They
shot away from me with exactly the speed and urgency that I'd been
looking for, the speed that, up until now, had been missing. My
strength poured out of me in step with the movement of the threads
and I felt a familiar sense of worry at how quickly it was fading.
    Taggart
was convinced that a failed attempt to find a specific individual was
of no long-term consequence. He'd told me several times that the only
result of a failure would be that I would exhaust my strength and
then simply lapse back into a normal, dreamless sleep.
    I
wanted to believe him. Certainly my limited experience so far had
seemed to support that idea, but the sheer pace at which I was
spending energy this time was alarming.
    A
combination of worry and fear spiked inside of me. The rising tide of
emotion threatened to destabilize the mixture I'd whipped up
intentionally, the feelings that made me think of Taggart, but I
managed to hold on for just long enough for one of the threads to
connect with something that felt like what I was looking for.
    Just
as I remembered happening before, the rest of the threads came
whipping back towards me, melting back into my body and providing me
with the strength I needed to thicken up the thread that had found
Taggart.
    For
a single heartbeat everything balanced on the edge of a knife. I
didn't want to go forward, didn't want to take the risk that I hadn't
actually found Taggart, but I knew I had to act right then or I would
lose my chance.
    The
thread reached some kind of critical mass and started to unravel, but
I pushed off against my surroundings at the same time that I pulled
on the line between the two of us. There was an odd catch, as if for
a moment the universe wasn't sure whether to pull him towards me or
send me hurtling towards him, but then I accelerated at an impossible
speed.
    I
couldn't have said whether the trip took hours or was over in an
instant. My head felt full, like I'd had hours of thoughts impossibly
compressed into a fraction of a second, and then I was there.
    I'd
been moving faster than I'd ever moved before, but I arrived without
stumbling, without even a whisper of sound to betray the fact that
Taggart and Eric weren't alone anymore. We were standing in the
middle of a featureless white plain. Eric was facing away from me,
looking at Taggart, and didn't give any indication that he'd noticed
any kind of change in his surroundings.
    I
knew I was looking at Taggart because I could see a shimmer where
he'd altered his features, but if not for that I'd never have
recognized him. He looked like an eighth-century Irishman. He had red
hair, a full beard and looked like he could crack rocks with his bare
hands.
    Taggart
hadn't given me any kind of instructions on what to do once I
arrived—probably because he hadn't actually expected me to be
successful—so I simply shifted my clothes and body, making them
clear and thereby rendering myself invisible.
    It
wasn't perfect. Looking down at myself I could see the same
distortion in the air that had clued me in to the fact that Taggart
had changed his appearance. Eric probably wouldn't be able to see the
difference, but I knew that Taggart saw the same shimmer in the air
as I did when someone changed their appearance.
    "What
do you know, Eric?"
    "I
told you—nothing is happening right now. No news is good news,
right?"
    Taggart
didn't look happy, in fact he looked like he was starting to lose the
tiniest bit of control over his beast. I circled around, moving
slowly so as not to