by A. J. Rand
Chaz had been one of my “rescue” victims. He had a nose for dream stalkers. He should. His father had been one. I was the one to put his father out of commission. Indirectly perhaps, but permanently.
If you think murderers, rapists or child molesters are the worst humanity has to offer, you’d be wrong. They’re bad all right, but at least those types of scum leave a physical trail that eventually leads to their capture or death if people are bright enough to figure it out. Dream stalkers, skin walkers and others of their ilk don’t. Dream stalkers will even perpetrate the same type of crime––abuse, rape, murder––but they do it in the dreamscape where the only evidence left is what appears to be the insanity of their victims.
Think about it. That is, if you can wrap your mind around the thought. Some sick-minded piece of crap goes to a late night meditation class, a bar, or maybe even spends the night with a group of his or her “friends”. They settle into a good meditative state, go to sleep, or pretend to pass out. They put themselves into a seeming state of unconscious awareness around a group of people who can vouch for their whereabouts. Then they drop into their victims’ dreams, commit whatever crime gets their twisted juices flowing and presto––deed done with no physical evidence.
The really good ones can even beat the crap out of their victims and leave marks and bruises that show up when their victim is awake. What are the cops going to do about it?
“Ma’am, tell us from the beginning––how did this happen?”
“The man beat me and raped me.”
“These are the bruises?”
“Yes.”
“Can you identify the assailant?”
“Yes.”
“And when did this incident take place?”
“Last night, I had this dream–”
“A dream.”
“Yes.”
“You are saying this happened to you in your dream.”
“Yes, but–”
“Okay. Thank you, ma’am. I think we have enough to go on for now. We’ll contact you if…”
Yeah, right. Case closed. One of the hundreds of women attacked by Chaz’s father was a devout little Catholic girl who mistook the bruises she woke up with as punishment from the Almighty for the type of dreams she was having. After all, they were her dreams, right? So she must have some kind of “taint” to make her dreams take that direction in the first place. She went to confession and spilled the sordid details to a priest.
The priest happened to be Father David, the one who had taken over my “care” from the nuns. Up to that point, dream stalkers and skin walkers had been among my primary duties. That was almost ten years ago. I’ve branched out a bit since then.
Dream stalkers are human. They are not demons, unless you were to qualify demons by the amount of darkness in the soul. But they usually appeal for the aid of some demon to get them to the state of getting their yayas off without getting caught. Chaz’s father was one of those. He made a pact with a demoness. She wanted a kid that was half human. He wanted access to the power the dreamscape offered him. It was a match made in hell.
The way the whole thing had gone down was also what made him so hard for me to catch. He wasn’t accessing the dreamscape through his own dreams, he figured out that controlling his kid’s dreams and using him as a channel gave him a lot more power. By the time I caught up to him, Chaz was ten years old and almost completely broken.
The man kicked my ass––several times, if you want to get technical about it. For the short term, he managed to really piss me off. In the long run, he did me a favor. Father David had to open my world up even further into areas the church officially refuses to acknowledge exists.
With a new and broader awareness of what was going on around me, I did the one thing Chaz’s father, and probably the church, never expected me to do––I tracked down mama. I was hedging my bets. Most demons will only propagate the species with their own kind. I figured there had to be something more here, if this demoness had chosen to bring a half-breed into the world. My bet paid off. Now mama was pissed, too.
I never had to deal with Chaz’s father again. Chaz’s mother took care of him. She had not been appreciative that he had tried to break the boy. It wasn’t pretty. It also wasn’t my problem any more. I did track the boy down to his physical location, though. That was my part of the bargain with the demoness. She wanted him out of that place before the cops were alerted to what was left of Chaz’s father.
I took Chaz to Father David and let the priest work with the kid. It took years to repair what daddy had done to him. But Father David was good. I stopped in and checked on Chaz from time to time over the years. When Chaz turned eighteen and left the orphanage, he showed up on my doorstep. The kid burned with the desire for stopping crap like what he had been through.
There was nothing I could’ve said that would have turned him away from it. Well, there might have been one thing, but Father David and I had discussed it and had come to a single decision between us. We never told Chaz about his mother. I’m sure it will come out some day. I hope it never has to come from me.
Chaz works with me, although I try to keep him from the worst of it when I can. That’s kind of like trying to hold back a river with a sieve, since the worst of it is all I seem to deal with any more. But I keep a close watch on him. Mama didn’t bring him into this world without a purpose in mind. Just because I didn’t happen to know her reasons, I wasn’t stupid or naïve enough to believe it was because she wanted to be saddled with a half-breed kid. It was better to keep him close so that when she did decide the time had come, I’d step on her clock.
A couple more turns took me into a strip mall parking lot. I rolled the address Chaz had given me through my head. It wasn’t a house like I’d been expecting. My face broke into a smile. Chaz had set up the meeting at a coffee shop. Like I said before––he’s a good kid.
I pulled into a space and set the bike into park position. My headset was dropped to hang loose around my neck and I pushed back some of the strands of long, black hair that had pulled loose from the thick braid that hung to my waist. Before entering the coffee shop, I stopped to get a peek at my reflection in the outside window.
Dressed in black leather from boots to chaps to jacket, with my exotic features framed in black hair above it all, I looked like a pretty tough chick. I guess I was for the most part. Over half the battle in my line of work was a firm belief in your strength and the ability to overcome anything. I wasn’t the only one that had to believe in it. Those I worked to help had to believe in it, too. They had to believe I was stronger than whatever it was they were dealing with. I had to make them believe it, or the battle was lost before I even started.
I shut down the tiredness in my eyes that came through sometimes when everything seemed so overwhelming. I donned my “business” face, specifically designed to mask the loneliness––the one that also tended to separate me even more from the rest of the world––and I stepped inside to deal with the next of what I’m sure is a long line of troubled days to come.
Chapter 3
The earthy aroma of ground beans mingled with the more full-bodied tang of fresh-brewed coffee, flooding my senses with a taste of pure heaven. I could close my eyes and die a peaceful death, right here, right now. Some health buffs may argue the dubious attributes of my caffeinated beverage of choice. They can keep arguing. Coffee is my nirvana, ambrosia––nectar of the gods. Sacrilegious? Perhaps, but the attribute is nonetheless fitting in my book.
I spotted Chaz. He was young. Too young to have seen the things he has in his lifetime. We all have our paths in life. His blue eyes twinkled with happiness at seeing me, set in a pale face that probably saw as little sunlight as my own. Cropped, blond hair was gelled to stand up straight in spiky disarray on top of his head, the tips of those spikes dyed black to leave an overall impression of short porcupine quills.
He waved me over to where he was sitting. The woman with him had her back to me. I held
up a finger and gave him a look that said first things first, and turned to the girl at the counter.
“Triple mocha with a shot of hazelnut.”
Hey––I make no excuses for my beverage choice comprising over ten times the daily recommended intake of toxic, refined sugar dissolved in a triple dose of concentrated caffeine. Things are the way they are and that’s the way I like it. If you think that’s bad, I was only getting started. If things held true to form, I’d probably have another before I left.
While the girl took time to make my order, I took the time to check out the woman sitting with Chaz. She had strawberry blonde hair that fell forward in a semi-messy curtain around her head and shoulders. Her arms were crossed in front of her out of my sight, with her shoulders slumped in toward her body. The body language told me she was feeling vulnerable, defeated and closed off. She was feeling the need to protect herself from outside influences. Yeah, no kidding. If Chaz was right, she should definitely be feeling a little of all the above. I opened my secondary senses and probed a little further.
The backlash was instant. It was as though I had stuck my hand into a slightly opened door and had it slammed on my fingers. The woman turned and glared at me, the heat of her gaze sparking a warning in her green eyes. Fair enough. I deserved that.
Sometimes I forget. Most people I come across––okay, most people, period––are unaware of the metaphysical side of reality. There are a few out there that not only sense it, but have a pretty fair handle on it. She was one of those select few. And she was strong. I’ll give her that. Better yet, she wasn’t going to take invasion of her personal space lightly. It gave me hope.
Number one, if a dream stalker was at the root of this woman’s problem, she was far from broken. Two, she still had a lot of fight left in her. These were both powerful points in my favor. They were factors that would make my job a lot easier. It also meant I had to start out our “getting to know you dance” with apologies on my side. Not the best position to begin from, but I could deal with it.
“Whipped cream?” The girl behind the counter had the pressurized canister poised above my waiting cup of pick-me-up.
“Of course,” I smiled and laid eight bucks on the counter. The coffee would come to about six. “Keep the change.”
I was feeling generous this morning. She handed me the coffee with my receipt, which I stuffed into my pocket. I had an expense account with the church. Father David and I had argued over “frivolous” expenses. He didn’t agree with my patient explanation of coffee as a necessity, until I pointed out that the bottle of scotch he kept hidden in the lower left-hand drawer of his desk probably wasn’t, either. I get paid for my coffee––but he rarely offers me any of his personal stash any more. It was a trade-off I could live with.
Armed with coffee in hand, I headed over to the table, taking my time. The woman was urgently whispering to Chaz. She didn’t seem happy. I fought the urge to sigh and sucked in a mouthful of whipped cream with my first taste of heaven for the morning. This was going to be a rougher start than I had hoped.
Chaz stood up to offer me the interior position at the table. I looked at him with patience over the top of my cup. The heat flushed his face and he sat back down, moving to the seat he had offered to me. I didn’t like to be blocked in by anybody. It was a force of habit. Ms. Green-eyes was watching my every move from across the table, her wariness emphasized with sullen resentment.
“Pietra, this is the woman I’ve been telling you about.” Chaz tried to break through the wall of tension permeating the air around us. She wasn’t budging.
“Yesh,” Chaz tried again. He had the audacity to give me a chastising look, the little snot. “This is Pietra Wells. Pietra, this is Yeshua Star.”
I winced. I hated the pretentiousness of my name. My father had given it to me. It wasn’t his surname, but he had made it mine. In this case, it helped. A ghost of a smile crossed Pietra’s face. She was satisfied with my discomfort.
“Pietra,” I nodded my head with politeness and assumed my best look of sincerity. “I will start right off with an apology for––”
“Miss Star––”
“Yeshua.”
“Yeshua,” she hesitated with a small frown. There was indecision in her face. She wanted to reprimand me without offering offense. That was okay with me. I could sense her need to exert a modicum of control into unfamiliar territory, so I waited with what I hoped appeared to be patient expectance.
“What you just did is wrong by my beliefs.”
Her words were carefully chosen. I was betting Wiccan of some variety.
“Such things should not be done without permission.”
I nodded acceptance of her statement. It was my turn now.
“Pietra, I apologize for causing you any level of discomfort. It was not my intention. However, you should be aware that with the nature of the things I am often called upon to deal with being as they are, permission is not a nicety I often have the time to deal with. This is especially true in the early stages of determining what is going on. An invitation at that point is a flashing neon sign that screams trap. While I apologize for your distress, I won’t apologize for the action itself.”
The first stages of introduction aside, I’m not going to dance around political correctness with fear of stepping on the toes of someone else’s beliefs. I come from an acceptance of all manner of beliefs. That courtesy is not often returned. If someone needs the kind of help I may be able to give them, I don’t have time to worry about giving them the warm fuzzies. In the end, they’re probably not going to be happy about how I do things, regardless. I do whatever is necessary to bring the bad guy down. And let’s face the real facts. If it could’ve been handled in a way that made the person involved comfortable, then they wouldn’t have needed me in the first place.
Pietra nodded recognition of my words, although I could tell she wasn’t happy about it. There was a visible struggle going on within her to put together a politic response. I avoided any indication of the impatience I was feeling and took some time to absorb myself in the cup of coffee cradled between my hands. Chaz took his cue from me and looked out the window to count cars in the parking lot.
“Miss Star,” she hesitated with a frown. “Yeshua. From what your friend has intimated, you may well be one of the few people in the world who can help me with––my problem.”
A slight exaggeration on his part, but okay. This was the hardest part to get past––the admission, not only to herself, but also to other people, that there was a real problem.
“My abruptness with you stems from my own feelings of vulnerability to outside influences tapping into me without permission.” The tears created a bright shine across her eyes, which to her credit went unshed. “Make no mistake––I am passing no judgment. I am in full approval of doing whatever it takes to stop this monster from continuing what he is doing.”
Good girl. The hardness of her voice on the last gave me free reign to move forward. In consideration of the delicate nature of her problem, I took another sip of coffee to give her time to absorb what she had just said before jumping in.
Looking at her a little more closely now, I could see she was somewhere in her mid to late thirties, about the same age I was. She had a spray of freckles dusting her nose. Combined with her fair complexion, it told me her hair color was probably real and not some dye-job. She was well rounded in form, perhaps a little overweight, but she carried it well and in all the right places. Her overall appearance was very attractive, but slightly unkempt, probably due to the stress she was under. As though she had heard that last thought, nervous fingers went to push her hair back behind an ear and then stopped to let it fall forward again. My hand came halfway across the table, but I held back at the last minute and looked at her with question.
“May I?”
She faltered. A look of panic flashed in her eyes, quickly shifting to pain and then resignation. Her fingers moved her hair back again to better
display what she knew I was asking to see. Just above the neckline of her shirt a deep, blackened bruise surrounded a set of teeth marks.
My hand dropped to the table, the fingers curling into a fist that I pulled back to drop in my lap. I wanted to touch it, probe it––but I already knew what I’d find. It took everything I had to keep a reign on the outraged anger that I was feeling on behalf of this woman and what she was being subjected to. I could probably even give her some relief from the pain and disconnect her from her torturer, but it would’ve only been a temporary fix that could alert the dream stalker to my presence. I needed for him to not know about me yet. Pietra sensed my inner struggle and dropped her hand to let her hair fall forward again.
“How many of these do you have on your body?” I was finally able to ask, but not without a lot of tightness in my voice. Her eyes dropped away from me in shame. My anger deepened.
“Several––in various areas. That’s the only one with teeth marks.” The hesitation was back and she almost choked on her words. “There are more––ones like finger marks––but just as dark––they are on my thighs.” The tears welled up again. “He––it––and there are others––”
“Other marks, or––?”
“No––other women. From my coven.”
“Let me guess––ten others?”
She nodded.
My dreams rarely led me wrong. They actually helped clue me into upcoming things. But, as usual, they had left out a few important details. I couldn’t wait to see what else was going to come to light.
“A coven.”
“Yesh––”
“Shit, Chaz––do you have any idea what this means?”
The confusion in his eyes told me that he didn’t.
“Is there a problem?” Pietra looked up at me, her voice rising with the levels of her anxiety.
“Yes and no.”
Both Chaz and Pietra were waiting for me to elaborate. I wasn’t sure how to proceed so I bought time by emptying my coffee.