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The following story is a work of fiction. It contains adult themes and situations and should not be read by anyone under the age of eighteen. The characters depected are copyright Radical Gopher. No character in this story is under the age of eighteen.

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PINS AND NEEDLES - Part VI (revised)

Gwen frantically stabbed at the elevator call button, but with no effect. She pushed against the elevator door in frustration. Unexpectedly her hand began phasing through the metal. She cursed to herself... She'd forgotten this was a dream. She should be able to shape reality to her needs. Concentrating, she pushed herself completely through the elevator door.

"Careful!" whispered Sapphire in the back of her mind. "This is a dream, but it's Victor's dream. You can influence things, but you cannot control them. You can't over-ride his fears or thoughts, and you can be hurt!"

"How?"

"If he believes you're injured, you will be. The Dream walking spell can and will cause a magical backlash in the real world. Break an arm here, and it will break in reality."

"I think it might have been nice to know this sooner," the skunkette said as she floated downward along the elevator shaft.

"Sorry," the vixen responded. "All that I intended was for you to use the spell to observe the cause of Victor's restlessness. You're in no danger as long as you don't interact directly with the dream."

"I understand, but it is a rather large oversight, don't you think?"

"Would it have changed your mind about coming in?"

"No. But from here on out I'm going to have to be a lot more careful."

Gwen reached the roof of the elevator car, but instead of phasing through it she tried opening the maintenance hatch first. It opened easily and she dropped lightly into the elevator. She pressed the open button on the control panel and the doors silently slid open. Before her stretched a short corridor leading into an alcove. From ahead she could hear the definite sounds of a struggle.

As she crept forward the fabric and structure of the dream seemed to change. The floor and walls became spongy making it hard to walk. The air darkened, taking on a reddish hue that made it feel thick and heavy. Shadows leapt forward from the walls and grabbed at the skunkette, wrapping thin tendrils around her arms and legs, pinning her firmly where she stood.

"What the hell...? Let go! Let go of me... NOW!" Gwen jerked her arm. The shadow ensnaring it stretched like rubber then pulled back, tightening even further.

"Why?" whispered a voice, soft as satin. "Why should I?" There was a long pause, as if the speaker were examining the dancer. "You are not of this dream. What are you? Who are..."

The skunkette answered her with a single word, "LIBERATIO!" The command snapped from her lips accompanied by a flash of emerald green. The wraith like tendrils tore themselves apart like tissue paper. The glow of magic chased the shadows away, back to the walls and beyond.

"Curse you!" the voice screamed shrilly. "You are a dream walker... A MAGE! You don't exist... You CAN'T exist! There is no magic save through ME! ME!" With that the voice retreated, pulling away from the skunkette, vanishing somewhere beyond, somewhere deep within the dream.

"What the hell was that," Gwen thought.

"I'm not sure," came Sapphire's worried voice. "Whatever it is, it doesn't belong in here with us or Victor."

"Is that what's causing his restlessness?"

"It might be," the vixen replied, "but we can't know for certain until we find him and observe his dream."

Nodding, the skunkette once more moved down the short hallway as it curved around into an alcove. Both the walls and floor had returned to normal, but the scene that both she and Sapphire beheld was anything but normal.

Victor was pinned firmly against a far wall by some kind of half-dragon, half-octopus like creature. One gray, scaly hand was wrapped around his neck, the other around his left wrist. Both were holding him several feet above the floor. From his expression it appeared the todd was doing his best to fend off the creature, but to no effect. The beast was bracing itself against the floor with two sets of tentacles while two other sets had wrapped themselves around the Zorr's lower torso. Each pseudo-pod seemed to pulse slowly with an syncopated rhythm.

Victor's voice was heavy and slurred and he pushed desperately against the creature with his one free hand. "Get OFFF! Let go! Let me go... Please! Damn IT! Get away... GET OFF!" His eyes looked up and locked with Gwen's.

The skunkette froze! She knew this nightmare... intimately. She'd known it for almost a year. She'd known it from that first terrible afternoon when she had been dragged, kicking and screaming into a filthy, garbage strewn back alley. The details were somewhat different, but there it was, a horrible beast, chasing her, trapping her, raping her time after time, night after night, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Only now it was Victor, not her wrestling with the horror.

Anger filled Gwen to overflowing. She reached into herself, trying to tap her manna but her rage blocked the path. She could not focus enough to reach her source of magic. Looking around she spotted a nearby fire axe and extinguisher.

Sapphires voice tried to break through to the dancer. "NO! Gwen DON'T... Don't let yourself be drawn into the dream!" but the skunkette ignored her.

She broke the glass panel and snatched up the fire axe. Raising it high over her head Gwen dashed forward and swung the axe against the creature's back tentacles. It cut through and a hideous, thick, greenish-gray ooze began pumping from the severed limb. The creature screamed, turning toward the skunkette. The beast's head was that of a human. It had distinctively feminine features with long, auburn hair. The face, though beautiful, was twisted in a snarl of lust and hatred.

Gwen raised the axe again but was slammed in the stomach by a long pseudo-pothat leapt out from the monster. She felt something give within her. A second tentacle wrapped itself around the dancer's head and began squeezing. Blindly, the skunkette slashed out with the axe, connecting with the beast's neck. There was a scream and the creature momentarily released her. It flowed away from Victor and come after Gwen.

Driving forward it wrapped itself around the girl and began forcing its way into her through every possible orifice. The skunkette tried to scream, but her throat was clogged with the foul thing. Behind it she could see Victor as he transformed himself into his pseudo-dragon form. Flitting around, he began burning the monster with his breath. Yellow green flame seared the beast's hide. Its skin bubbled and smoked under his assault. The dancer's world began fading out as the breath was torn from her body. Distantly... very distantly she could hear Sapphires voice calling to her.

"Wake up... Gwen! Please...wake up...wake up...wake up...WAKE UP!"

She opened her eyes with a start to find herself lying on the floor, Sapphire kneeling over her.

"What? Where am I?"

"You are lying on the floor of my bedroom," the vixen answered, her voice stern and cold. "You should be dead. You would be if I hadn't been riding shotgun. I barely pulled you out of the dream in time."

"What happened? It's hard to remember anything except...except..." Gwen suddenly put her hand to her mouth as she felt her stomach churn and bile rise in her throat. She scrambled across the bedroom floor barely making it to the toilet before loosing her breakfast.

Sapphire watched sympathetically until Gwen had finished, then she helped the skunkette to her feet and settled her into a nearby chair. "What happened? Well, quite simply you pulled the kind of mistake only an apprentice would and interacted directly with Victor's dream."

"That thing...It was attacking Victor, hurting him. I had to do something," she rasped. Gwen's throat felt horribly dry. She tried swallowing and winced in pain.

Seeing this, Sapphire got her a glass of water from the bathroom. She handed it to the dancer who slowly drank it. The water quickly soothed both the dryness and burning sensation. "That thing you saw couldn't have physically hurt Victor. It's impossible for a person's dreams to cause them physical harm, not unless there's some kind of magic involved. Certainly, it wasn't pleasant, no nightmare is, but it couldn't have hurt him."

Both Gwen and Sapphire looked over at the todd. He was no longer twisting and turning restlessly. Now he lay flat on his stomach snoring softly. "At least you seem to have ended his nightmare," the vixen said smiling.

"For now," the skunkette replied. "It will be back."

The djin looked at her intently. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I recognized the dream. I use to have one quiet similar at least a couple of nights per week."

"You?"

Gwen nodded. "It started right after I was raped by Teddy's friends."

The vixen looked at her quietly for several long moments, then over at Victor. "Are you saying he was... raped?"

"I don't know for certain," the skunkette replied, "but the image was so vivid, so familiar. It's why I reacted the way I did. I remembered my own dream. The parallel is so close I... I really don't know what else it could be."

Sapphire quietly rose from her chair and went over to Victor's side. Sitting on the bed she reached over and gently stroked the todd's ears, brushing her fingertips lightly against his fur. He stirred, rolled onto his back and slowly opened his eyes. Smiling, he looked up at her.

"Good morning magic lady," he yawned

"Good morning silly fox." The vixen looked over at Gwen. "Could we have a little privacy?" she asked softly.

Nodding wordlessly the skunkette slipped into her bathrobe and left, closing the door behind her. She padded quietly down the stairs and went into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of coco. She took the drink into the living room and sat on the couch. Her mind went back to her dream walk. Things were slowly becoming clearer, more focused as she examined the dream.

Sapphire was right. She had acted impulsively. The dream-walking spell required more than a little insouciance. Interacting with someone's dream could, and did have serious consequences. She resolved next time to be less emotional, less distracted. Then it occurred to her. She hadn't been interacting with the dream when it had first turned on her. The shadows that had bound her had done so of their own accord, or rather under the influence of another. The question was, another what? She doubted it was Victor who attacked her. Could there have been another dream walker present? If so, how? She and Sapphire were the only ones in the room, the only ones able to walk into his mind. Gwen shook her head. There was so much she didn't know about the spell that she would have to wait and ask the djin these questions. Somehow, she didn't think the answers would be comfortable.

The doorbell rang. Gwen looked up to see the shadow of a figure standing before the curtained front window. Rising, she set her cup of coco on the coffee table and went to the door. She pulled her robe straight, ran her hands through her hair and opened the door.

A tall, beautiful human female with auburn hair and light brown skin stood before her. She was wearing a very conservative navy-blue skirt and jacket over a powder-blue blouse. Under her arm she held a small purse. She looked directly into the skunkette's eyes, which were open wide with shock and recognition.

"Excuse me," asked Alyssa Aryan, "but is this the residence of Victor Peabody?"

Gwen responded by decking the woman.

****

"How does it feel now?" Sapphire asked.

Alyssa lowered the bag of frozen peas from her eye and looked up from the couch. "It still stings a little, but not as bad as before." The tissue around her left eye was already swollen and mottled in red and dark-purple. The vixen leaned in and gently dabbed at the eye with a damp washcloth before pressing the bag of peas against it again. "How does it look?"

"I've seen worse," Sapphire answered truthfully. "Do you have any dark sunglasses with you?"

Alyssa shook her head. "I hadn't planned on getting knocked on my ass when I came over here."

"Considering what Gwen could have done, you got off rather lightly." She looked down on the human woman. "Truthfully... what did you think would happen, showing up here the way you did? Especially after what happened between you and Victor."

"I don't know. I was hoping I could talk with him, try to figure some things out." She paused and bit her lip. "I really don't understand it myself. I've never... NEVER done anything like that before in my life. I swear. I was just so... so..."

"Out of control?" the vixen offered.

She nodded. "I don't understand why either. I've had the hots for guys before. I've even slept with a few of them. But this... It's so out of character for me. It was like I was possessed, like I'd become some kind of feral creature but at the same time not. I knew what I was doing the whole time." Alyssa sat up on the couch and dropped the peas on the floor next to her. Her hands dropped into her lap and she began wringing them. "What's wrong with me?" she sniffed. "Am I going crazy?"

Sapphire looked at Alyssa, listening to the tenor of her voice, watching both her aura and how she held herself. She knew the woman was telling the truth. She could sense her regret and sorrow as something palpable. She sat down next to the woman and put an arm around her. "No crazier than the rest of us I'm afraid."

Alyssa looked around the room. "Where's your friend gone?"

"She's in a back room somewhere, crying. She's never really hauled off and smacked someone the way she did you. It upset her."

"It shouldn't. I deserved it." She picked up her purse from the table. Opening it, she took out a videodisc and pressed it into the vixen's hand. "Here... I want you to have this."

Sapphire removed her arm from around the woman and took the disc. "What's this?"

"I pulled it from the museum's surveillance system. It's the only copy. It proves that Victor wasn't a willing participant in what happened."

"I know... he already told me about it," Sapphire said. "I don't need this to believe him."

Alyssa smiled. "The two of you have such a beautiful relationship. It's hard to find that kind of trust within the circles I normally run."

"Maybe you should consider changing circles. One cannot be to careful in the friends they pick."

"Maybe..." she replied thoughtfully. "Were you aware that Victor can change himself into a dragon?"

"How did you come to think that?" the djin asked.

"There's more on this disc than just... us," Alyssa explained. "Right after I fell asleep your mate transformed himself into a very small dragon and flew away. When I first saw it happen I wasn't sure I hadn't gone crazy." She looked intensely into Sapphire's eyes. "I'm not crazy... am I? He can change shape and you already know it."

The vixen looked at the human long and hard. "No, you're not crazy," she said finally. Alyssa breathed a small sigh of relief. "But in telling you this you must realize this is the kind of secret you can never tell anyone about, and I mean ANYONE! One word to the wrong person, one whisper in the wrong ear could have serious consequences for Victor, our family, and most assuredly for yourself."

"I give you my word. I'll never tell anyone about Victor or what happened yesterday, and I certainly will heed your warning."

"It wasn't a warning," Sapphire said. "It was a promise." She stood and looked down at Alyssa. "Now... would you like some tea?" she asked, smiling."

To be continued...