Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2

by Jody Wallace

  Which reminded her of the way he’d chased her yesterday, and what they’d done in the bathroom right before the matriculation session with Karen.

  Right before she’d killed more wraiths in the dreamsphere and dragged their corpses into the terra firma.

  Maggie was getting nowhere. Zeke had cut her off. She couldn’t talk to Adi or the curator. As a two-month trainee, she didn’t possess half the information she might need. “Lill, do you want get some lunch?”

  “Sure.” Lill stretched. “If I’m going to piss Adi off by interrupting her powwow, I need to do it on a full stomach.”

  Karen braced a hand on the arm of the couch and rose shakily to her feet. “That sounds lovely.” She shuffled forward, stumbled, and connected with Lill, who’d reached the door.

  Zeke jumped up to help, but not before Lill shoved Karen away, blinking rapidly.

  “It’s called walking, Karen. You had no trouble doing it earlier today.”

  “Excuse me.” Karen smiled. “My foot went to sleep.” She accepted Zeke’s arm. “What are we having for lunch?”

  Lill rubbed her hand slowly along her opposite arm and then inspected her palm. She made a fist. “I don’t care what you’re having, but Maggie and I are going out to eat.”

  “You can’t leave,” Karen repeated.

  Lill laughed. “Watch us.”

  Maggie was only too happy to comply. With one last glance at Zeke, who’d returned to staring at the TV, she scuttled out in Lill’s wake.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled like mad.

  As soon as she and Lill escaped the outbunker with their sandwiches and sodas, Maggie spoke up. “He’s not himself, is he?”

  “Shh. Not yet.”

  Lill glanced at the door that had thunked shut behind them. The outbunker lurked almost entirely underground, except for the concrete structure that marked the primary entrance. Several SUVs and a Hummer parked alongside the dirt road. The temperature wasn’t hot, though Maggie could tell, by the glare of the sun in the cloudless blue sky, that mid-summer here would be merciless. The geography of the desolate terrain included sage, dirt, scrub and wizened trees. Mountains with traceries of snowcaps were a near-mirage in the distance.

  “I’ve never been here before. Which way do you think we should walk?” The plastic sack in Lill’s hand crinkled in the breeze.

  Maggie carried the sodas. She checked her watch and then the sun. “West. I heard someone say there’s a prairie dog town.”

  Lill strode unerringly in the correct direction, as if she possessed an internal compass. The dirt road snaked past the outbuilding toward the west as well, so they didn’t have to navigate through scrub and rocks. It split about a hundred yards from the bunker and they remained on the westerly course.

  Once they’d put some distance between them and the outbunker—not that Maggie was aware of any hidden speakers outside it—Lill continued the conversation Maggie had begun.

  “No, Zeke’s not himself.” Her strides were longer than Maggie’s and quick. Maggie had to book it to stay abreast of her tall friend. A decent cloud of dust ruffled behind them.

  “Do you think he’s exhausted?” Maggie asked. “Or was he this distracted when he teaching Karen the first time?”

  To her surprise, Lill came to an abrupt halt. “I think he’s been confounded.”

  Maggie skidded to a stop. A pebble had worked itself into her shoe and she winced. “Besides the curator, aren’t you the only confounder in the outbuilding?”

  “Adi’s a confounder as well. Most vigils have the full slate of abilities.”

  Maggie had studied the basics of alucinator skills in class. Confounding required dreamspace contact or, in the terra firma, skin to skin contact. A confounder had the ability to flicker into dreamspace to conduct the necessary memory erasure. Field teams employed the skill frequently, when civilians experienced brief, or not so brief, encounters with manifested creatures and alucinators decked out in combat gear. It was rarely used for other purposes.

  “So you think Adi is…”

  The vigil was intent on discovering all she could about Karen’s healing, and she’d attacked Zeke in the dreamsphere—not that anyone besides Maggie remembered—but did that mean Adi would use her confounding ability on them? Unfortunately, the blatant misconduct would explain the memory lapses Maggie had observed.

  “I don’t want to believe Adi’s gone off the deep end. But I’d rather believe that than Karen’s cockamamie stories about a Master wraith prowling the dreamsphere.” Lill headed for a heap of rocks near the road, and when she reached them, she kicked at them with a booted foot.

  Maggie followed several paces behind. Was Lill so frustrated she needed to take it out on inanimate objects? “What are you doing?”

  “Scaring off snakes.” When none materialized, Lill took a seat and pulled out her sandwich. “The only other explanation I can think of is pretty damn implausible.”

  Maggie joined her and handed her a soda. “At this point, is anything implausible?”

  “It could be a different vigil…or the curator. Zeke could have been confounded by anyone who—well, anyone who could confound all of us to forget he’d done it.”

  Adi had warned them not to trust the curators, and Lill had never done so. Her clashes with Moody were not private. “Why would a curator make Zeke forget the details of the past several days when the rest of us remember them?”

  Or most of them. Did Lill realize she’d forgotten certain details as well?

  “You mean like you and him hooking up?” Lill asked dryly.

  Maggie’s skin heated. This wasn’t a time for lies. “Actually, yes. It was fairly memorable.”

  “I imagine so.”

  “Of course he might be hiding it from—”

  “His jealous psycho ex?”

  “You know, he’s not the only one who’s displayed memory lapses. You have too.”

  “Have I?”

  Maggie tried to recall the specifics of the encounter they’d had after the code one yesterday. “For one thing, you denied cussing Adi out for hurting Zeke and vigil-locking the barrier.”

  “Don’t remember that. I mean, I remember the vigil-lock but… Hmm. Perhaps you misinterpreted the situation. Confounding doesn’t exactly work on other confounders.”

  “I didn’t misinterpret.” Maggie tried again. “We also discussed how helpful Karen had been in the sphere. At first you said she was useless, but then you seemed to forget. You told her you knew she’d been helpful. Could someone have gotten to you?”

  Lill shook her head. “I haven’t let anyone touch me since I started noticing discrepancies. Last night I barricaded myself out of the sphere for sleep too. I didn’t take any chances.”

  “I wish you’d warned me.” A vision of Lill smacking Karen’s hand away from Zeke’s face popped into the forefront of Maggie’s brain. And another one, recent, of Karen stumbling into Lill. “Wait. Someone did touch you. Karen. Do you remember smacking her hand away from Zeke yesterday, because you sensed something?”

  “I… Yes.” Lill’s lips thinned.

  “Today she stumbled into you.”

  “She’s not a confounder, so she can’t—” Lill cut herself off. Her eyes narrowed with a lethal gleam that would have frightened Maggie if it had been directed at her. “I’ll kill her.”

  “Karen is the one erasing memories.” The pit of Maggie’s stomach bottomed out. If Karen could confound Zeke, even Lill, then everyone was wrong about Karen being harmless. What else was she hiding beneath her victimized exterior? “I told you I wasn’t responsible for the manifestations. If Karen’s erasing memories, she could be causing the code ones as well.”

  “Shit. This explains a lot. In Harrisburg, nobody understood how she created so many conduits—such a huge horde. It’s because she has a confoun
der’s ability to access the sphere for seconds at a time. I can’t believe nobody considered this, especially after she vigil-blocked Zeke. Hell, what if she’s responsible for hiding your signature from us too?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. Who knows what she can do?” Maggie was grateful to have someone to discuss this with. Lill’s consternation was similar to what Maggie had been feeling for days. “Have you ever heard of conduit blindness before?”

  “Never,” Lill said. “I don’t think Adi had, either. I could tell by her expression when the curator described it.”

  “This means Karen somehow tricked the curator too.” Many of the symptoms of conduit blindness he’d listed, such as wraiths thronging around Maggie, were damning—but was conduit blindness the only reason wraiths might throng around a person? “If she can create code ones whenever she likes and we confront her openly, Harrisburg could happen again. More people could die.”

  “I’ll work on Adi. You work on Zeke. Someone who’s been confounded can be reminded of the hidden information with the right stimulus. Make sure you’re touching him when you pull him out of it. The trick to restoring confounded memories is to know what’s been erased.”

  “I can’t pry him away from her.”

  “Leave that to me.” Lill finished her lunch and stuffed the trash into the grocery bag. “Let’s go.”

  While Maggie felt vindicated by Lill’s reaction after everyone doubting her for so long, she wondered how much Lill would continue to support her if she told Lill about being a bellatorix. But it wasn’t fair to deepen Lill’s involvement without giving her all available information. In this case, more heads were better—in particular, heads that hadn’t been confounded.

  “One more thing, Lill. Have you ever heard of the Antipodes scroll?”

  The last time she’d mentioned it in front of Zeke, hoping he’d bring Lill into their circle, he’d been confused. Perhaps he hadn’t been hiding information from Lill and it was collateral damage of the apparent confounding.

  “Yeah.” Lill didn’t pause. Maggie had to jog to keep up. “It’s some fairytale about alucinators who can kill wraiths inside the dreamsphere.”

  Maggie took a deep breath, inhaling sagebrush-scented dust. After she coughed it out, she said, “It’s not a fairytale. That’s where the corpses have been coming from.”

  “A bellatorix?” Lill halted and turned toward her with interest. “And you think it’s Karen? You think she can kill inside the dreamsphere?”

  “No,” Maggie said. “But I can.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Zeke couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this tired. In fact, he couldn’t remember all sorts of shit that should have come easily. Effortlessly. The names of past students. Locations of area castrums and waystations. The periodic table.

  Hell, who was he kidding? He’d never memorized the periodic table, but the rest of it? Should be right…there.

  This morning when he’d woken, he’d forgotten he wasn’t in bed with Maggie. He’d rolled over to wake her before the alarm went off and found himself face to face with a grinning Karen.

  His foulest nightmare come true.

  Was he completely to blame that he’d screamed like a little girl and leaped out of bed in two seconds flat?

  Karen’s thin face had scrunched with offense. Mindful of Adi’s instructions that Karen had to be kept happy, he’d offered a placating explanation. “I was having a bad dream.”

  “And I made it worse?” she’d guessed.

  No one had ever said psychos couldn’t be astute. He’d shrugged and sorted through his duffel bag, looking for clean clothes. A chilly hand on his back had nearly sent him leaping for the ceiling again.

  “I understand,” she’d said softly. “You’re worried about losing me like you’re losing a student to the curator. You want to be a good mentor.”

  “I’m not worried about that.” He wished he could lose Karen and keep Maggie. He did feel sorry for Karen, trapped alone for a whole year in dreamspace, but his sympathy faded the longer he was around her. The longer he had to humor her. He wasn’t sure he bought Karen’s story that the devil, aka the Master, had made her do all the shit she’d done.

  She’d never seemed like she was under anyone’s control, then or now.

  “You’re right not to.” She’d patted him. “It can’t be avoided.”

  Zeke’s vision had hazed, like it had been doing more and more. He vowed to quit squinting at his phone screen today. He hated to admit it, but he might be approaching the need for some reading glasses. The headaches and blurry vision, plus all the time he’d spent reading on his phone to avoid conversation, added up.

  His vow had lasted until the first ten minutes he’d been locked in a room with Karen and nothing to do.

  Now, he, Karen and a few alucinators waited for Adi and the curator to finish whatever marathon bitch session they were having. Karen had been glaring at him ever since he moved off the sofa because he was sick and tired of her touching him all the time. Her tangible effect crinkled his nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard.

  What was keeping Maggie and Lill so long at lunch? He’d asked the guard at the door. They’d headed down the dirt road to the west—nothing suspicious, but how long did it take to eat a sandwich?

  Zeke checked the clock on his phone for the seventy-eighth time. It was three minutes past the last time he’d checked.

  “We should discuss my next training session.” Karen had sidled to the edge of the sofa closest to his chair. She hung on the arm, staring at him. “Last night was restful, but we shouldn’t spend another night outside the dreamsphere, unless Adishakti is willing to approve my…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Lobotomy.”

  “She’s not going to approve it until you tell her what she wants to know.” Zeke frowned when he realized he’d forgotten what it was Adi wanted.

  Oh, right. The healing. Zeke yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth. Karen had had a cut or something and it had sealed itself overnight.

  “I tried,” Karen reminded him. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Do you think the curator would help protect us from the Master? Perhaps then I’ll be able to relax and share my knowledge.”

  Zeke glanced at the others in the room, but they weren’t paying attention. “That would require explaining everything to the curator, and I don’t think Adi’s okay with that.”

  “The curator outranks her. She shouldn’t keep anything from him.” Karen’s eyelashes fluttered. “Curators have powers and abilities the rest of us don’t. Having the old man there may be the perfect solution.”

  Zeke was spared from having to argue when Lill and Maggie returned. Lill made a surprising beeline for Karen. “The curator and Adi want to see you.”

  Karen rose and smoothed her hands down her baggy sweats. “What for?”

  “Something about tonight,” Lill said. “Come on, don’t make them wait.” She held open the door.

  Karen paused in front of Zeke and stretched out her hand. “Shall we?”

  Zeke eased back in the armchair, out of her reach. “They didn’t ask for me.”

  Karen crooked a finger as if he were dog. “Don’t be silly. I need you with me. They understand we’re together now.”

  “I’m your mentor. That’s the only ‘together’ we are,” Zeke said, conscious of Maggie pretending to ignore the conversation on the other side of the room.

  “That’s what I meant,” Karen said, emphasizing the Ts. She’d been so faded and feeble since she’d woken, it took him a moment to recognize her annoyance. “Let’s go.”

  “He’s not invited,” Lill drawled. “Just you, sunshine.”

  Karen swiveled toward Lill. “Why would they send you instead of fetching me themselves?”

  “Be sure to ask them that.” Lill flashed a smile at Karen, all teeth and
hostility.

  While it wasn’t unlike Lill to be acerbic, she knew as well as he did that Adi had instructed everyone to treat Karen with kid gloves. Karen’s fragility and tendency to burst into tears was offset, somewhat, by sympathy. What had Maggie and Lill discussed on their walk? What had changed?

  Did he care if it meant he could get a breather from Karen?

  He glanced at Karen, whose cheeks had pinkened with anger, and deliberately flicked on his phone. The snick of it coming to life was hard to miss in the tense silence of the room.

  “See you later,” he said offhandedly.

  Karen finally preceded Lill out the door. Zeke didn’t miss the significant glance that passed between Lill and Maggie.

  As soon as the door shut behind Lill, Maggie approached him. “We need to talk.”

  He’d been putting this off. Not that he could have managed his apology and goodbye to Maggie with Karen leeching him, but his gut hollowed out anytime he thought about it.

  “I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t…” Pain socked him in the head, from temple to temple. “I should have been a better mentor. You shouldn’t have to go to the Orbis. You must be terrified.” As was he, on her behalf.

  “It’s not that.” Her gaze cut to the other alucinators, who were hardly oblivious to the other people in the room. “I’m not thrilled about it, but I need to talk to you about something else. Alone.”

  “Sure.” For Maggie, Zeke stuffed his cellphone into his pocket and didn’t even think about pulling it out. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know how much time we have.” She bustled out the door, shutting it behind them. Biting her lip, she glanced up and down the corridor. “Hell. Let’s go outside.”

  She led the way up the long staircase to the surface and out of the outbunker, nodding to the guard. Zeke waved at the guy, who had a bandage on his neck. “Getting some air.”

  The guard logged them on the register but didn’t speak. Adi hadn’t ordered the outbunker’s residents to remain inside the underground facility, and the main compound was several miles away. There was nothing out here but the cars they’d driven in and a dirt road leading nowhere. The flatness of the surrounding landscape had made dispatching the wraiths during the second code one easier—nowhere for the bastards to hide.