5 Chapter Five

Riding in the car wasn't so much a pain as the silence was. Amber hadn't spoken a word since we got in the car, and I couldn't help but wonder what was going through her head. Her aura was still dripping blue, and the longer we were in the car, the thicker it got.

"Amber I know you're worried, but you seem scared out of your wits, what's wrong? What are you not telling me?" I asked quietly.

Nothing.

"Amber, come on, tell me something, I won't know how to help you if you keep giving me the silent treatment." I said clearly, I couldn't tell if she was just quiet out of sheer fear for her sister, or because she really didn't want to talk to me.

I kept quiet for a few more moments, not sure if she was going to shout at me or keep it inside her head. Though I could tell that she was hitting her limit, whatever she was trying to do, it was just sucking the energy out of her. And if she wasn't going to tell me what was wrong I was going to have to find out myself.

While still in her trance, I slowly reached out for her forearm, all I needed was a little bit of contact and I would know what's going through her head. I had sworn off threading with my friends because it was intrusive, but I knew she wasn't going to tell me out right. And when our skin touched, I then knew why she was quietly driving around in circles.

With the world quickly slipping from my vision, what took its place was something more beautiful than I had ever seen before. The fields of grass were shining with the warm sunlight shining from above. The sky is more blue than any dimension I myself had ever seen, and beautiful Celtic fiddle notes coming from somewhere off in the distance, and before I could get stuck in the pure delightfulness of this place.

I could see the ocean not too far from where I was standing, the waves smashed into the side of the mountain I was standing on, and for a moment I forgot why I had threaded my way into Amber's head.

I looked around the field for Amber, usually when threaded into someone's head I am usually able to walk around, touch things, and sometimes even talk to the entities in other people's memories and thoughts. Though standing here in Ambers thoughts, I couldn't move. It was almost like threading with someone in a coma, the sights were here, but it was more or less like being in a dream, just someone else's dream. I looked down at my feet to see if there was some way I could break the hold, but then realized that I was in Ambers shoes and seeing through Ambers eyes.

The fear of getting stuck in dreamscape was enough for me to break the thread. Which is what happens when I sometimes enter a dreamscape, though usually when I wasn't able to do anything, it was usually a sign that something had control of that persons' thoughts and actions. Which was a frightening thought knowing I was in Amber's mind.

When my mind snapped back to reality and my eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness of our surroundings, I noticed that it wasn't daylight outside anymore, darkness had fallen like a cloak of fear on the forest around us and certain markers of where we had been going were starting to appear. Tall hemlock trees are scattered with thick oak trees in the densely covered forest floor, and with almost no light shining through the canopy, the forest just seemed all the more eerie. Every mile and a half there was either a blacked out street marker with painted white icons on each one, or another emptied out parked car, the license plates all blacked out just like the signs.

I couldn't tell exactly where we were, but the markings on the passing signs were starting to look familiar. Each one showing a familiar greek, egyption or celtic symbol, I knew we couldn't be far from a vampire coven. The signs a warning to all intruders that none past this point would return.

I had to somehow cut Amber out of her trance without getting stuck myself, and because I knew threading with her would only be a bad idea, I decided to go the old fashion route and just slap her one really good time in the face.

Her eyes shooting open and shaking her head "Fuck! What the hell Willow!" she yelled. "What the hell is going on?"

"Amber where were you? You've been zoned out for the past two hours! Do you even know where you're going?" I yelled back, it was the only way I knew I'd get the quickest answers.

"Oh shit! Willow, how did we get here? I was just worried about how we are going to find Phenelope and the next minute I'm driving into someone's vampire den." she said looking at the painted signs equally as confused as I was feeling next to her.

"Amber it's not just any den, Amber, you drove us to Endenville, I don't even know how to get here, how did you even know where to find it?" I asked, hopefully shocking her into remembering more about her trance.

"I- I don't know, just a second ago I was feeling Phenelope's energy and trying to follow it. But I thought I was driving north towards the Old Garden, I wasn't going this way." she stammered in the glow of green lights coming from the dash of her car, which is when I noticed the gas meter was riding dangerously low.

"Okay, someone is trying to turn us around and get us lost, we need to get out of here before someone sees us if no one has already." I said in a hurry.

Checking my phone's contacts for someone to call, coming to Raven's number only to let out a frustrated sigh when all I got was a beep beep beep in my ear indicating that I was out of range of any cell phone tower. Cursing under my breath I dialed star one and sent Raven a short voicemail explaining the situation and where we were. At the least she would get the message as soon as we were clear of this town and at least out of the line of sight.

"Where do we go? What do I do? I have no idea how we got here Willow." Amber was panicking at this point and I had to calm her down, we weren't going to get anywhere like this.

"Amber look, I just left Raven a message, I'm going to pull up the GPS and see if i can find us a quick way out of here. I have an idea of what happened but it's not safe here and we need to get onto the main road again." I said pulling out my phone, tapping on the GPS icon, I could see the phone trying to do something, but whatever or whoever was making the mirage was also interfering with the frequencies on our phones, making the GPS as useful as licking my finger and sticking it in the air.

"Okay, there has to be another way to get out of here, can you see above the trees at all? I can't see anything up there." I asked quickly, trying to gain control of the situation. I knew Amber could see through the eyes of some animals, like I could with others minds, but it might be a long shot in the dark like this.

"I'm sure as hell going to try," she said, dropping her hands and resting them by her side. "here, take the wheel." With my hands replacing hers on the wheel she looked up and suddenly her eyes turned a misty white, the sign that she had a lock on the sight.

Her hands gripped tight at the edge of the car's seat, she said "I can't see much, it's really dark even beyond the canopy, I can see some lights about three miles away to the northeast, they are in a group, it looks like it might be a really big house or something. And I can see a small clearing about a mile from that," she said struggling to see beyond that, normally she would have no problem scouting an area with a bird or an animal in the trees, but the darkness seemed to penetrate anything it touched. "But I can't see anything beyond that, it's too dark up there, even the moon isn't giving off any more light to help." she said.

"Well then we need to get to that clearing, but we really need to avoid the house, that is going to be our only way out of here." I said urgently.

"We are going to have to cut through the forest if we are going to get there, we can't get the car there, there's no road that connects. Pretty soon we will come up on a dead end." Amber said, opening her eyes and taking the wheel. Pulling the car to the shoulder of the road, Amber came to a stop and put the car in park, turning off the lights.

"Okay, let's do this." I said flatly.