Succubus Shadows Page 0,79

face was a mixture of emotions. Anger. Disbelief. And...resignation. That didn't surprise me. Jerome's face did, however. He had stiffened at Erik's words, a spark of insight flashing in those cold, dark eyes.

"But you could do the ritual, correct?" he asked Erik. "You're human. You're strong enough to open the way."

Erik eyed him warily. "Yes...but by your own admission, it would achieve nothing. The connection you had to her was theoretically strong enough to possibly summon her back, but you can't enter. All we'd have is a useless doorway."

Jerome stood up abruptly. He glanced at Roman. "Find your own way home." The demon vanished with a showy poof of smoke.

And I vanished back into the Oneroi's prison. They stood there in the dark, glowing from what they'd taken from me. In dreams, though I suffered, I never felt the horrific effects they caused until I returned from them. That was when the agony, energy loss, and confusion hit me. Yet, this time, I wasn't completely lost to despair.

"You were wrong," I said. I tried to put some smugness in my voice, but it came out hoarse from my exhaustion. Good God. I was so, so tired. I guess dreaming didn't necessarily mean sleeping. "My friends have figured it out. They know where I am."

As always, One and Two were nearly impossible to read. "What makes you think that was a true dream?"

Excellent question. "Gut instinct," I said.

"You believe you can trust it?" asked One. "After all this time? After so many dreams? How can you tell what's real and unreal?"

I couldn't. I knew when the memories were true - for now - but the "real world" scenes were harder. Maybe it wasn't my gut so much as my blind optimism that believed what I'd just seen was real.

Two guessed my thoughts. "You hope. And we've fed that hope, making you think you have a chance. So you will wait. And wait. And wait."

"It was real," I said firmly, as though that would make it so.

"Even if it was," said One, "it meant nothing. You saw for yourself. There is no way to bring you back."

"Maybe that was the lie," I said. "Maybe the rest was true. You mixed it. They figured out where I was, but you didn't show me the part where they learned how to rescue me. They're going to do that ritual."

"They will fail. Nothing can pull your soul from here."

"You're wrong." I didn't even really know what I was saying. My essence felt like it was tearing apart, and really, the only thing I knew to do was to keep contradicting them.

"And you are naive. You always have been. Lesser immortals carry that weakness over from their human days, and you're one of the worst. Our mother nearly used your weakness to free herself from the angels. Now it will be your downfall."

"What do you mean Nyx almost used it?"

The Oneroi exchanged glances - very, very pleased ones. "Your dream. Your fantasy," explained Two. "The one she promised to show you if you freed her. You wanted so badly to believe it was possible, that you nearly gave in."

For a moment, I didn't see them or that perpetual blackness. I was in a dream of my own creation, not theirs. The dream Nyx had sent to me over and over had been one of my future, with a home and a child - and a man. A man I loved whose identity remained a mystery. Nyx had never shown me the ending. Never shown me the man in the dream.

"You are so full of shit," I said. "You claim Nyx shows the truth - the future. But how could that vision have been true if I'm also supposed to be locked here for all eternity? They can't both be true."

"The future is always changing," said One. "That was true when she showed it to you. Your path shifted."

"Oh, come on! What's the point of having a vision of the future if it can change at any moment? That's not a truth or a lie. That's a guess. And I never believed her anyway. What she showed me was impossible - even if I wasn't here with you two assholes."

"You will never know if it was," said Two. Then, he reconsidered. "Actually it was possible, but you will live with the knowledge that it's a future that's been taken from you."

"You can't take what I never had," I growled. "Succubi can't have children. I could never have