The Dream Thief (10 page)

 "Look, let's do this. I'm going to read you as I was told to do. And when your dream comes, you can share it with your son. Okay?" These were words I knew damned well were forbidden. But nothing happened. No clamping down on my brain, no pain payback.

"Your dream will come in a little bottle. When you're ready, you remove the stopper and go to sleep. That's all there is to it. Anybody sleeping in the same room as you will share the dream. Do you understand?"

She nodded, looking shaken but determined.

"There will be a price exacted for this, but you don't get to know what it is. This is important. It won't be a thing you expect." I waited for the twinge of pain warning me that I'd said too much, but again, nothing. This was starting to freak me out. Not that I'm into pain, but I don't like it when the rules change all of a sudden and nobody tells me.

"I'm serious about this. It could cost you everything. It could cost you your soul."

"If it gives him some comfort, I would pay even that."

Well, there wasn't much more of a warning I could give her, and for once, I figured she meant it. I pulled out the contract, and as she signed it I realized I was jealous of the kid. There he was, a vegetable for life, stuck in a bed until the day he died. But he had a mother who would die for him, or worse. Mine had skipped town when I was ten, resurfacing just long enough to leave me with a huge and dangerous legacy before she died.

"How do we do this?" Margerie asked, all business.

"Give me your hand."

Everything felt so strange. I wondered if the read would take place at all.

But the instant her fingers touched mine images rocked through me, too fast to catalogue them all.

I'm holding a baby, still damp from birth. A love, fierce and possessive, flares in my breast as his wide blue eyes focus on mine; his outraged wails hush at the sound of my voice. A man—thin, bearded, wearing thick glasses—holds a toddler in one arm and a book in the other, his lips moving as he reads out loud. The fierce love for the toddler is still there, twining around a more mellow affection for his father. A small blond boy rides a tricycle around and around on the lawn, whooping cowboy yells at the top of his lungs. We stand outside Williamsville Elementary on the first day of school. I'm fighting tears, but he gives me a toothless grin and runs off, untied shoelaces trailing dangerously, to join a friend. A soccer game. The principal's office. Homework at the kitchen table. Movie night with popcorn and root beer floats. Always it is the three of us: the man, the boy, and me. Until the man is missing and it's just the two of us, standing in a graveyard. It is snowing, my tears freezing on my cheeks. My son—when did he grow so tall? He has his arm around my shoulders, protective, surprisingly strong.

They were not my memories, not my pain, but I found myself fighting to catch my breath. Margerie had tears on her cheeks, but a smile glowed through them.

"Thank you, for that. I remembered things I'd long forgotten. When will I get the dream?"

"Usually a day or two." I was already at the door, anxious to escape both from the boy lying so still, and from the heartbreak of his mother's love.

 

 

 

 

"A smart, resilient heroine, a scarred hero, dragons that are all too real and much too close, and myriad doorways that lead from a modern ER into dreams and waking and everything in Between make for a sparkling debut novel. Most enjoyable."

 

— Carol Berg, National Bestselling Author of
The Demon Prism

 

"A rich wonder of a fantasy, full of life, death, dreams and nightmares becoming real, and dragons. I was swept away."

 

— Robin D. Owens, Award-Winning Author of
Heart Secret

 

 

Vivian Maylor can't sleep. Maybe it's because she just broke up with her boyfriend and moved to a new town, or it could be the stress of her new job at the hospital. But perhaps it's because her dreams have started to bleed through into her waking hours.

All of her life Vivian has rejected her mother's insane ramblings about Dreamworlds for concrete science and fact, until an emergency room patient ranting about dragons spontaneously combusts before her eyes—forcing Viv to consider the idea that her visions of mythical beasts might be real.

And when a chance encounter leads her to a man she knows only from her dreams, Vivian finds herself falling into a world that seems strange and familiar all at once—a world where the line between dream and reality is hard to determine, and hard to control…

 

 

 

"Wakeworld is a fine adventure. Kerry Schafer gives us heroes we can root for and a world that twists and turns like an Escher print so that nothing is quite what it seems."

 

 — Anne Bishop

 

"Schafer brings a unique voice to urban fantasy, and her writing has a dreamlike, magical quality. A captivating read, a real page-turner!"

 

— Yasmine Galenorn

 

 

Vivian Maylor is trying to hold it together. But her attempts to build a life with the man she loves seem doomed by the dragon inside her yearning to break free. Vivian is a Dreamshifter, the last line of defense between reality and the Dreamworld, and the only one of her kind.

Weston Jennings also believes he is the only one of his kind. He fears his powers as a Dreamshifter, and resists learning to control them. After suffering a tragic loss, Weston heads deep into the woods of the Pacific Northwest to embrace a safe life of solitude. But when a terrible mistake leads to an innocent's death, his guilt drives him to his former home, where he encounters what he never thought he would find: another shifter.

Now Vivian and Weston must work together to defeat a new threat to the Dreamworld.

 

 

Kerry Schafer was born and raised in Canada, moved back and forth across the border a number of times, and finally settled on a compromise. She now lives in Washington state, but within an hour's drive of her home and native land. Her childhood book collection traveled with her through all of those moves and she is still acquiring books and bookshelves. During her lifetime she has worked as a lumber piler, an OB nurse, a secretary, and a substitute teacher, among other things. No matter where she was living or what she was doing, she was creating writing time. Currently she balances writing and family with her work as a Family Practice RN.

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

Copyright © 2013 Kerry Schafer

All rights reserved.

 

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

 

eISBN: 978-1-937776-64-0

 

 

 

THE DREAM THIEF

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

 

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