“Lillian and I assumed the second conduit was Maggie’s, but it wasn’t.” Zeke pressed the dirty T-shirt to his shoulder again, since the chest lacerations had slowed to an ooze. “The mystery dreamer, during our confusion, has continued to send manifestations after us.”
“They do seem to be trying to eat us more than the average wraith,” Rhys said. Zeke noticed the big man was no longer unscathed. One side of his leather jacket had been sliced and diced like taco lettuce and a cut bled on his hand. “Either they’re starving or you’re onto something.”
“If it’s not Karen, who would attack you?” Maggie asked, her voice thready. “Do you often get attacked like this?”
For a moment, nobody answered. If the Somnium had enemies, they didn’t know about them. Renegades were few and far between and limited to runners who didn’t want to be involved with the organization, monetarily or otherwise. Outside of research and development, manifesting wraiths guaranteed a short trip to the Orbis and a long chat with a curator.
A chat that never ended.
Attack by wraith was just not done. Alucinators weren’t stupid.
“No,” Zeke said slowly. “It’s too hard to get away with it. We’re all tagged so our signatures are recognized instantly. This is someone without a tag.”
“Look, I agree this is irregular. But another neonati in this vicinity popping up active the same night as Maggie? Not even Sean would agree that was statistically likely.” Lillian ripped open another gauze pad, tossed the wrapper to the ground, and dabbed another of Hayden’s wounds. “The thing is the only people I know who can disguise their tags are—”
“Curators,” Rhys and Zeke said at the same time.
Zeke cursed. It was too huge to conceive of, too ridiculous to be true, but it was possible. A curator could be responsible for this. “If the curators want to kill us, what the fuck are we supposed to do?”
“Maybe they’re testing you,” Rhys suggested.
“They’d be testing us all, not Zeke alone.” Lillian taped gauze in place, her expression lethal. “If I could get two minutes alone with that bastard in the terra firma, he’d think twice about messing with us.”
“Down, girl. He’d listen to you now as well as he did in Harrisburg,” Zeke told her. “He was one cold son of a bitch.” The curators didn’t have names, or didn’t choose to share them.
Rhys shifted, his bulk blocking the doorway. “We should call HQ. Demand to know why the curators are trying to take us out. This could be huge and we’re smack in the middle of it. Wait. Can we trust HQ or should we assume they’re compromised?”
Zeke didn’t appreciate the tinge of excitement in Rhys’s tone. “If the curators want us dead, we’re about to be dead, Rhys. We can’t use this to advance our careers.”
“From what I understand, your superiors need you—all of you—to be doing what you do.” Maggie waved her hand around the room. “They have no reason to attack you. The simplest explanation seems to be another newbie like me. Someone who’s been having nightmares. Someone who’s had a tragedy recently. I have lots of neighbors, but I don’t know them well enough to say who...” Her voice trailed off.
“The coincidence,” Rhys argued, obviously clinging to delusions of political grandeur. “We need to pursue this with HQ, but carefully.”
Maggie gripped Zeke’s arm. “Oh my God. Could it be Hayden?”
Zeke stiffened as the possibility hit him. Lillian, too, froze to stare at Maggie. He could tell the possibility was hitting her just as hard—ton of bricks hard. Rhys rubbed his chin.
Maggie let go of Zeke, who steadied himself, and leaned over her brother. “He’s been sound asleep this whole time.”
“Everyone in the city is asleep right now,” Rhys said doubtfully. “It’s four-thirty a.m.”
“But not everyone’s going to cluster manifest their nightmares right under our noses,” Zeke said with disgust. A neonati having to tell him and his field team how to do their jobs? If this was true, he had no intention of putting it into the report. “I can’t believe we didn’t guess. No, I believe it ’cause it’s par for the course for our team. We always get the freaks.”
“Maggie, you’re a genius.” Lillian indicated the man on the bed. “Your brother’s been manifesting wraith after wraith while we blamed you. All the factors are there, as much as they are for any neonati. I guess it can run in the family. And he’s at least an L3.”
As if on cue, Hayden mumbled in his sleep.
“I wonder about Allyson,” Maggie said. “I have a number for her we could try, but she never answers.”
“Before we go chasing your sister, we’ve got to wake your brother’s drunk ass up,” Zeke said. “That’s the quickest way to confirm whether or not it’s him and he doesn’t need to be in the dreamsphere without a mentor.”
Lillian patted Hayden’s face lightly. When that had no effect, she snapped a popper from the first aid kit under his nose.
He twisted away, groaning.
“Come on, sleeping beauty. Rise and shine.” She shoved the popper toward his nostrils again.
His eyes—the same brown as Maggie’s—cracked open.
His gaze fell on Maggie first. “Hey, Mags. I feel like crap.” His deep voice creaked with disuse. “Who are these people?”
“It’s okay, Hayden.” Maggie reached a hand toward her brother. With a puzzled expression, he took it. “They’re here to help.”
“Help with what?” Hayden tried to sit up, obviously woozy.
“The dreamer awakes.” Lillian pressed his shoulders to the bed. “Hold still. There was an...accident with the balcony doors.”
“Looks like a bomb went off in here.” He quit fighting Lillian, his red-rimmed eyes taking in the broken French doors and bleeding people. “Mags, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Maggie released his hand and stepped back, under Zeke’s arm. “What do you remember?”
“Not much.” His face wrinkled in a grimace. “Tell me who your friends are.”
Maggie introduced everyone by their first name, but Hayden’s suspicious expression didn’t fade. “What are you people doing in my house?” he demanded.
Everyone looked to Zeke for the answer. He considered telling Hayden they were here to save his ass, but that hadn’t worked on Maggie and almost certainly wouldn’t work on her brother. But he couldn’t think of what to say. He leaned more heavily on Maggie, partly because his ears buzzed and partly because he could. The tangible was a faint susurration behind the discomfort of his wounds.
“Why don’t you tell him, Lill?” he finally suggested.
Lillian quirked an eyebrow at Zeke before returning her attention to the brother. “Don’t worry about us, Hayden. Worry about yourself. You’ve lost some blood. You have any OJ in the fridge? We need to replace some of your fluids. You’ll want iron supplements and B12 over the next few days.”
“I’m bleeding?” Hayden groped his neck and chest. He winced and cursed. “What the hell?”
He tried to stand, wobbling, but Lillian shoved him down again, nearly strangling him as she tightened a bandage on his neck.
“I hate drunks,” she declared. “You’ll have to dry out before you can be properly trained.”
“I’m not a drunk, lady, but if you don’t get your hands off me, I’m calling the cops.” Hayden motioned at Maggie. “Where’s the phone?”
Zeke squeezed Maggie’s shoulder. “Like sister, like brother?”
“Trust them,” Maggie reiterated to Hayden. “They came here to help us.”
“Or rob us,” he said with a frown. “They look like criminals.”
“Because you look like an upstanding citizen,” Lillian grumbled, continuing to minister to him as well as she could. Hayden seemed even less cooperative than Maggie had been when they’d first met her.
Apparently a lot of things ran in this family. They should set their investigators to find the sister.
“They can explain the dreams you’ve
been having.” Maggie shifted under Zeke’s arm, her posture tense. “The ones that feel real. The ones with the monsters.”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ve had nightmares too. They’re here to make them stop. You dreamed you got attacked when you came home tonight, didn’t you?”
Hayden’s brown eyes widened with shock. “What the hell? Did I talk in my sleep?”
To Zeke, the response validated Maggie’s idea. The second dreamer was Hayden. With him awake, his conduits would close and disaster could be averted. Zeke’s instincts about Maggie and the situation had proven reliable.
Thank God he wasn’t going to screw this up.
“Does it matter how we know about your nightmares?” Lillian threatened Hayden with the tape roll. “Sit still or I’ll let you bleed to death.”
“You don’t know squat,” Hayden said.
Behind them, Rhys’s radio crackled, and he spoke into it before sharing the information with Zeke. “All clear. Again. Mel confirms that the geolocation depicted these surroundings and that all conduits disappeared three minutes ago. Right when we woke this guy. Damn. Can’t believe I suspected the curators.” He chuckled, embarrassed.
“We’ll be fudging some details on the report,” Zeke agreed. Lillian and Rhys nodded. “I’m just glad it’s over.” Maggie’s dreamsphere would be less chaotic without Hayden’s conduits two rooms away, and Zeke no longer feared he wasn’t up to the task of mentoring her. He was almost looking forward to it.
And he could use the bonus pay to replace his damn walkie.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Hayden batted Lillian’s hands away yet again, and she grunted with disgust and threw the tape at him. It bounced off his head. “Maggie, why are you going along with this?”
“It’s not a joke, and it’s not TV cameras,” Maggie told him. “Let’s see. You’ve been dreaming about zombies and alien-headed vampires, and in your dreams they kept killing you, didn’t they? Last night you dreamed they swarmed the house.”
“How do you know that?” Hayden asked in a softer voice. “I didn’t want to come home, and I... My God, Mags. What’s going on?”
“Once you sober up, we’ll explain,” Maggie said. “But for now, can you just trust me? Have you ever known me to pull practical jokes or show any interest in reality television?”
“Never.” Hayden sighed heavily and glared at the intruders in his room. His bloodshot eyes spoke of too little sleep and too much beer. He wasn’t the first neo who’d resorted to drugs or alcohol when the nightmares hit. Or who’d refused to cooperate. “Breaking and entering is illegal.”
“It’s hardly breaking and entering when they’re here on my invitation,” Maggie snapped. “They saved our lives, Hayden.”
He shrugged, his expression pure, mulish denial. Zeke recognized it from yesterday evening when it had been on his sister’s face. “From what? I have a few cuts and you’re not hurt.”
Maggie growled. “Can we shock him, you guys? I’ve heard ECT is good for depression.”
“Maybe,” Lillian offered. “I could set it on low.”
Hayden glanced between the two women, lingering on Maggie’s glower. Zeke was grateful Maggie and Lillian had taken the lead in handling Hayden. He felt too tired and dizzy to humor another neonati. And he was definitely not mentoring this jerkwad.
He’d assign Rhys. Hey, he’d wanted the sister. Why not the brother?
“If Maggie says I need to go along with this, I will. For now.” Hayden flipped the tape back to Lillian. “But I don’t need anyone fussing over me.”
“Suits me.” Lillian motioned toward Zeke. “Want me to fuss over you, cowboy?”
“Actually, yeah,” Zeke admitted. Maggie helped him sit on the foot of the bed. “I don’t feel so hot.”
Hayden rolled out of the way and headed shakily for the door. When Rhys stopped him, he said, “Gotta take a piss and apparently drink some damn orange juice. That okay with you, buddy?”
“I could use some OJ,” Rhys said amiably. He and Hayden disappeared, leaving Maggie, Lillian and Zeke alone.
Lillian, despite being the anti-Florence Nightingale, was gentle as she cleaned and taped Zeke’s wounds. Maggie fussed over him as well, easing him out of his T-shirt so Lillian could check the claw marks on his chest. They’d wait until they returned to base to get stitches—the cuts weren’t bad enough to visit an ER and deal with the resultant paper trail—but Lill could clean and prep him for their staff doc.
Maggie praised his bravery and his stupidity equally as she gave Lillian the blow-by-blow. “When my pepper spray emptied, Zeke broke the doors and dusted the last vamp.” Maggie eyed the demolished double doors with a pained expression. “If he’d have let me spray the vamp in the first place, I wouldn’t have to shell out for as many repairs. Why do men always think women have to be protected?”
But even as she said it, even as Lillian laughed, Maggie stroked Zeke’s back, her warm fingers moving up his spine to feather the hair on his neck. When Lillian finished bandaging his wounds, Maggie patted the white gauze.
He could get used to this. Not Lillian—he was already used to Lillian, and she was doing her job.
He could get used to Maggie.
And maybe, after she earned her diploma, he’d do all those things to her he’d promised.
It was going to be the longest three months of his life.
The man caught the puling creature by the neck and yanked her to her feet. “You failed.”
“I did as you ordered.” The woman’s neck twisted as her beseeching gaze latched on his face. “Please, master. Please don’t kill me. I can try again.”
“You said you could control the wraiths.”
Tears glistened on her cheeks, wan in the muted colors of the dreamsphere. “They knew what I wanted them to do but I lost my hold.”
He tightened his grip, lifting her into the air. Her thin fingers clawed at his wrist as she choked. Annoyed by the spluttery noises, he shook her. Her tears dripped on his hand.
Disgusting. She was disgusting. He dragged her face close to his.
“I believed you when you said you could do this. When you said your time with them would make them the easiest target.”
She gagged. He squeezed. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Please,” she begged. “I almost had it. I stopped the wraiths from killing the L5. I just need practice.”
He sensed her sly attempt to firm the dreamsphere under her feet. To adapt her surroundings to her will when his will was the only one that mattered.
After all this time she wouldn’t stop fighting him. So mundane. He’d discovered early in his career that insane people didn’t have good sense.
His fingers bit deeper into her flesh. She felt like dough—dough with chicken bones in it. It would be simple to break her, but then he’d have to start over.
Best to keep his toys intact until he found better ones.
And that should be soon. He was close to discovering the conduit.
With a heave, he threw the woman to the ground as hard as he could. A bone snapped audibly somewhere inside her, the sonic waves a delicate ripple.
He bared his teeth in a grin. They were tranced. That would carry over. Perhaps she’d learn not to exaggerate her abilities this time.
“Not only are your old friends not dead,” he pointed out, “but you lost me the L5. They have him now.”
Her face pressed against the ground and her arm cradled at her chest, she thought at him meekly, “You can make another. You can make as many as you want.”
“True.” He’d allowed them to have all the L1s and L2s he’d created during his experiments. The nobodies would funnel money into their sainted headquarters, but it would also keep them busy. Overbooked. Understaffed. Not paying attention. “Though finding the appropriate circumstances won’t be easy.”
“You have time.”
He let her think that. It made her somewhat compliant and defini
tely terrified of him, to assume he was omnipotent, omnipresent, omni everything.
Only he knew the truth. And if his plan worked, her vision of him would be the truth.
He returned her to her body through a raw conduit instead of the one he’d used to drag her here so it would hurt more. He imagined he could hear her screaming even through the barrier.
Adishakti Sharma frowned as she checked the patient’s vitals. The woman’s pulse was accelerated, her breathing was harsh, and her EEG was flat as a pancake. The last part, at least, was normal in a comatose patient.
That was when she noticed the woman’s reedy arm was bent at an impossible angle.
What in the world? She lifted the telephone in the room and spoke. “Blake? This is Adishakti. I’m with Karen Kingsbury and she’s got another broken bone.”
“Any signs of her coming out of the coma, ma’am?” Blake asked.
“No more so than ever.” Sometimes Adi wished they’d put Karen out of her misery in Harrisburg, but when murder could be avoided, the Somnium avoided it. The curator they’d petitioned—a man she had met several times through the years—had been insistent Karen be kept alive. Many had argued against him. Adi’s friend, Lillian Hotchkiss, had argued the hardest and with the least care for her career. But the curator’s will had stood firm.
Lillian still ranted about the man whenever she and Adi were alone. Sometimes when they weren’t alone, which Adi thought was most unwise of her, but Lillian wouldn’t be Lillian if she kept quiet about her frustrations. It was why Lillian would never rise higher than sentry. Which suited Adi’s friend just fine.
In theory, despite Lillian’s thoughts on the matter, Adi did not disagree with mercy. Murdering Karen would have been unethical. All life was sacred, even the life of someone evil. Every time she wished that Karen hadn’t survived the incident, guilt soon followed.
“I’ll alert medical,” Blake answered. “Do you want me to notify the other vigils now or put it in a memo?”
“Courier,” Adi said. “By the end of the day. I will question the guards and review the tapes myself.” It would be as helpful as it had been the previous two times, no doubt—which is to say it would not help.
Tangible (Dreamwalker) Page 11