Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2

by Jody Wallace

  It meant he’d been really fucking stupid. Now he was older, wiser and in love with a wonderful woman who didn’t deserve him—because she deserved better.

  It also meant he got why Maggie insisted Karen wasn’t his fault. It was possible no one could have been smart or savvy enough to fix Karen. His judgment lapse hadn’t directly caused her breakdown or the chaos that resulted from it. She was so fanatical and distorted in her worldview, nobody could have prevented her from going off the deep end.

  He still regretted everything about Karen, but figuring her out was no longer his job. Just stopping her and her monsters so Maggie and the curator could live.

  Zeke grabbed the first Nosferatu by the cloak before it entered the bunkroom and slung it into the second one. Their hairless, grub-white heads pivoted to glare at him. They hissed through their curved teeth and flung themselves at him in concert.

  “Not him, you dolts!” Karen yelled. “Kill the whore and bring me the old man.”

  The Nosferatus shrugged off Karen’s orders like she wasn’t shrieking at them. Considering Karen’s shriek out-pierced the T-Rex and banshee combined, that was saying something.

  The T-Rex was too busy digging through the pile of rubble it had created by colliding too hard against the ceiling to roar. Masonry scattered in all directions as it disintegrated the obstruction.

  Zeke sliced off one Nosferatu’s head. The other swiped at him with razor-sharp fingernails, so he cut its hand off. Black blood spurted from its severed arm like a geyser, spraying Zeke with copper-scented liquid.

  Holy fuck, he’d forgotten about that trick. This one must have fed on a human at some point after manifesting.

  Bastard.

  The Nosferatu stretched its wounded arm toward him, trying to spray his eyes. Zeke zigzagged and lunged, putting an end to the vampire’s tricks for good.

  Two zombies and a wailing hag left between him and…

  The T-Rex, finally past the rubble, stalked past Karen’s hiding place toward Zeke. Zeke took one step farther from the bunk room. Two. This corridor wasn’t much longer, but he could run to the end, duck into the last bunk room, and…

  Die later, rather than now.

  Using all her strength and patience—and trying not to panic—Maggie pushed and tugged the curator up the bunk ramp until he could reach the ladder in the tube. She’d been close to death several times since becoming an alucinator, but she’d never get used to the stomach-wrenching tension, the watery knees and the buzzing in her ears.

  She probably wouldn’t have a chance to get used to it. The T-Rex roared ominously. The curator winced in response.

  Well, actually, that was because she’d pinched his leg, trying to get him to hurry. The penlight was clutched between his teeth, and it wagged and wavered as he labored.

  “Sir, lift your foot to the bottom rung.” Maggie heaved upward. The old man was thin and wizened but a challenge for her. This close, their bodies were way friendlier than seemed proper, and he smelled faintly of carrion.

  It wasn’t him, though. The whole outbunker smelled of carrion. Wraith rot took a while to air out, especially when living wraiths were actively trying to eat you.

  “I’ll push,” Maggie continued. “I’m sturdier than I look.”

  The penlight’s beam stilled, and the curator’s teeth clinked on the metal.

  “I’m not as limber as I used to be,” he complained.

  “Don’t answer me. Put the light in your mouth and climb.” The tube ascended into the dark—endless, claustrophobic and possibly populated by wraiths.

  They were never going to make it, but Zeke was right. The high chance of failure was no reason not to try.

  Maggie wriggled into a position where she could hoist the curator higher. The slanted ramp provided decent footing with a corrugated surface, but she had nowhere to brace and one functional hand. The banshee’s wails sounded like they were two inches from her ears. Every second, she expected a wraith to jump her from behind.

  So far Zeke was holding them off. As promised.

  The curator coughed. “I can’t…oopsie.” The flashlight plunked down, out of the curator’s mouth, and pinged off Maggie’s head. “Damn and blast.”

  Her scalp stung but she didn’t yell. She had to encourage the curator. He was human, scared, elderly, and not cut out for this. There was no reason to be hateful.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We know where the ladder goes. We don’t need a light.” The tool clattered to the floor, its beam twirling on the far wall. She clung to the old man. There was no way she could release him to fetch the penlight.

  He muttered something and then said, “Give me a minute, girlie.”

  As if on cue, the T-Rex roared again. It was closer. The walls shuddered as it hurtled toward them—toward Maggie. She knew who the T-Rex was after.

  “We don’t have minutes. If you could just…” She bent, clamped her arms around his knees, and elevated him, trying not to bellow like a weight lifter. Her back screamed at her almost as loud as Karen and the banshee were screaming in the hallway. “Grab, sir. Gotta get higher.”

  Her legs trembled with the strain of holding the curator aloft. She tried not to decode the sounds of combat outside the shattered door but couldn’t help it. Metal clanged. Wraiths squalled. Zeke cursed. Karen raged at him, furious that he was putting himself in danger for Maggie.

  For Maggie. He was sacrificing himself to give her a chance. He didn’t give a shit about the curator. But Zeke was right about more than attempting the climb—protecting the old man was their duty.

  The curator’s weight eased out of her arms as he pulled himself into the tube. Her spine’s protests subsided to a bitchy moan. She caught his foot with her good hand and boosted him that last inch.

  The earsplitting roar of the T-Rex crescendoed in indignation. What was its problem? Karen screamed again and again, as if the monster were after her instead of Maggie.

  The doorway to the bunkroom rocked with an explosive boom. The bunks quaked.

  “Shit!” Maggie lost her grip on the curator’s shoe. Luckily, he didn’t tumble onto her head like the penlight. He’d found a solid perch. At last.

  Too late for Maggie. The dino slammed against the wall that separated it from Maggie, roaring like the devil was on its tail. The sound deafened her, a physical pain. Flailing, feeling like her ears were bleeding, she hit the deck and jounced down bunk ramp. The corrugations bruised her butt, adding insult to injury.

  With a whump, she landed hard beside the penlight. Concrete dust billowed around her. A heavy silence descended along with the debris.

  No screaming Karen. No banshee. No green spider glow leaching in from the corridor. No moaning zombies. No Zeke.

  If he were alive, he’d call for her. Maggie’s heart thudded with loss, but she knew, since her heart was thudding, this wasn’t over. She couldn’t stop yet.

  What now?

  First, she heard the curator’s rapid breaths, echoing down the escape tube. He was alive. Then she distinguished the low, dangerous thrum of a giant beast just…over…

  Darkness concealed it, whatever it was. But she feared she knew.

  Trying not to whimper, Maggie rested tentative fingers on the penlight. She raised it, shivering with fear, to shine at the doorway.

  The T-Rex’s huge head nosed through the rubble. Bigger than the first one by half. She’d never seen a wraith so large. Yellow eyes pinned her to the dusty concrete floor.

  It lifted its lip like a prehistoric Elvis and growled.

  The T-Rex continued its hunched course. It had figured out how to avoid bashing itself senseless against the ceiling. Serrated teeth glinted in the green light. It slowed its advance, plodding toward Zeke like a komodo dragon on a scent. Its head rubbed along the ceiling.

  Karen raced after it. “Not him,” she yelled
at the lizard. “Not him, not him, I order you, do not hurt him.”

  The T-Rex roared in defiance. Zeke jogged backward, reluctant to run until he was sure the dino would ignore Maggie and follow. He was the only line of defense between Maggie and the wraiths.

  “Come on, meathead. I’m right here.” Quick as a cat, he skimmed a throwing star at the monster. It buried itself in the dino’s neck, harmless but annoying. “Come and get me.”

  The dino barreled into the zombies and banshee, knocking them aside. Karen leaped like the spider…and landed on the dinosaur’s back.

  What the hell?

  She plunged Zeke’s large dagger into the monster’s spine. Its huge, reptilian head thrashed. Its tail walloped the wall beside the bunkroom with a giant boom, followed quickly by its body, as it tried to shake Karen off.

  The ceiling fissured. The wall began to crumble. She clung to the puny knife with grim determination, her face a mask of fury.

  Zeke had never seen any alucinator, good or bad, experienced or noob, do anything as insane as what he was witnessing right now.

  The T-Rex bawled out its pain. Its tail lashed, and its massive head connected with the weakened wall. Violently. Pieces of concrete landed on the banshee, the zombies, the spider and its detached legs, almost on Zeke. He dove out of the hail of debris.

  After a terrifying moment, silence reigned. The banshee must be dead or it would be wailing up a storm. One down.

  The rubble had crushed the spider parts, cloaking the area in near-darkness. Zeke slid along with a wall at his back. He strained to hear, strained to see. Grumbles. Creaks. His eyes slowly adjusted. A faint glimmer radiated from where he’d last seen the spider’s body, which meant it was alive under the rubble. Alive and kicking, with its one leg.

  The dark outline of the T-Rex lingered in front of Maggie’s bunkroom. Or most of the T-Rex. The giant wraith’s head appeared to be inside the room itself.

  A thin beam of light blinked out of the room and flickered over the T-Rex and its rider.

  Karen shouted triumphantly. The spider managed to free itself from a large piece of wall, flooding the area with its eerie luminescence. The T-Rex roared.

  “Bite her in half!” Karen kicked the T-Rex with her heels like a demonic cowboy.

  Shit, Maggie must not be in the tube. Without a second thought, Zeke sprang into action.

  The T-Rex roared two feet away from Maggie’s scrambling feet. The sound was a physical blow, launching her into the far wall. Wet gobbets of unknown origin smacked her clothing, her exposed skin. The hot odor of vomit and wraith poured over her like a bucket of dirty water.

  She gagged. Karen’s voice shrieked something about biting Maggie in half. She could only see the T-Rex’s weaving head, but Karen sounded close.

  “Are you all right, dear?” the curator queried. She had no idea how he could make himself heard over the T-Rex and Karen.

  “Climb higher,” she yelled. Desperately, she stuck the penlight in her armpit and fumbled with the sword belted to her waist. She rose to a crouch so she could draw it. It looked like a stickpin next to the T-Rex’s bulky head.

  “I can see you,” Karen crooned. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Maggie directed the penlight past the T-Rex’s toothy jaws, but there was no sign of Karen on either side of it.

  The T-Rex grumbled but didn’t attack. Yet. Was Karen forcing it to eat its dinner in small bites so she could watch? Sick. Several zombies interjected moans into the proceedings. Quick footfalls approached. Werecreatures? Whedons? What new wraiths would appear beside the T-Rex to gloat over Maggie before tearing her to pieces?

  She clamped her bad arm against her side, steadying the penlight in her armpit. When she died, she wanted to see it coming. Gingerly, she extended the blade, wondering if she could slice an eyeball like Zeke had with the first T-Rex.

  Instantly, the T-Rex lunged. Its great jaws snapped two inches from the tip of Maggie’s sword.

  She stabbed it in the nose. The metal point sank deeper than expected. The blow jolted her arm as if she’d struck concrete instead of wraith.

  It drew back with a snakelike hiss, yanking her sword with it. Maggie staggered forward involuntarily, her fingers clinging to the hilt, before she let go.

  Dammit—now she only had a knife and a penlight.

  The T-Rex whipped its head back and forth, the sword wagging like a dog’s tail. Its stunted forearms pawed uselessly at its jaw. Frustrated, the dino proceeded to scrape its face along the crumbling wall.

  “I said, kill her,” Karen yelled at the dinosaur, and kept yelling, a diatribe of hate.

  But the dinosaur rubbed its head along the closest wall, intent on the sword in its schnozz. Chunks of concrete succumbed to pressure and gravity until the entire room was practically exposed to the corridor.

  Karen’s screeching rose in volume until it sounded like it was right outside the room. Where was she? A flicker of motion on the T-Rex’s back caught Maggie’s attention.

  Holy shit. Karen was astride the T-Rex, midway up its back. How she was clinging to it while the dinosaur flailed, Maggie had no idea—and didn’t care. Karen was distracted but good. Maggie scrambled up the ramp, toward the escape vent.

  The curator had managed two rungs higher into the tunnel, and the penlight revealed that his limbs were trembling. Sad eyes gazed down at her.

  “My girl,” he shouted over the frenzied T-Rex, “I don’t think this is going to work. Help me down and save yourself.”

  “You can do this,” she urged, glancing at the T-Rex. Its hissy fit slowed, but instead of focusing on her, its wide, four-toed feet trod past the hole in the wall, intent on something deeper in the outbunker.

  What could possibly be left to distract the T-Rex with Karen shrieking nonstop for it to rip Maggie to shreds? The woman’s voice hadn’t even grown husky, and she’d been shouting like a teakettle for several minutes.

  Rocks bounced off the monster’s hide. One struck Karen, who cried out, a pleasant variation in her harangue of hatred.

  “Over here,” Zeke’s voice yelled. “That’s right, you scaly bastard.”

  Zeke was still alive. And tossing rocks. Maggie’s heart thudded with joy.

  “Leave him alone,” Karen ordered the T-Rex. “Zeke, stop throwing rocks. You’re making him angry. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “Fuck you,” Zeke snarled.

  Hope bubbled inside Maggie like soap in a fountain. If Zeke could survive a bunch of wraiths plus another T-Rex, the damn curator could climb a few more rungs of the ladder.

  “Sir,” Maggie called up at the curator in her sternest voice. “Climb four more rungs, and I’ll come up behind you and support you. You don’t want to die here, do you? Because I don’t.”

  She didn’t want Zeke to die either and trusted that he’d taken care of the climbing wraiths as promised. She’d crabwalk the old man to the surface herself if it meant giving Zeke space at the bottom of the tube to shelter from the T-Rex.

  Not that she could actually haul the curator to the top—but enough adrenaline was surging through her that she felt like she could.

  Zeke was alive. He was still alive.

  “I’ll try,” the curator conceded. “You shouldn’t have to die because I’m old and worn out.”

  Maggie considered standing on her tiptoes and pushing the curator higher but opted to check the battle raging outside. “Be right back.”

  She sidled down the ramp, not on her butt this time, and crept over the collapsed wall to peer into the hallway. She eased the penlight in the direction the T-Rex had gone.

  Twenty feet beyond the bunkroom, Karen clung to the back of the T-Rex like a manky saddle. Maggie couldn’t see Zeke, but she could hear him. He and Karen exchanged taunts—or, rather, he taunted Karen while Karen extorted him to leave the T-Rex alone.
Maggie didn’t see any other wraiths, though she could hear distant zombies.

  What was Zeke planning? How much farther did the hallway extend? And how much damage to this section of the outbunker had the T-Rex done?

  Zeke’s footsteps danced on the far side of the T-Rex. Since the T-Rex and Karen hadn’t noticed Maggie, she evaluated the area, checking for wraiths and cracks that could bring the whole place down. The greenish light emanated from an unfamiliar monster. Radioactive like the spider, its single appendage scratched wildly in all directions as it chittered like a giant squirrel.

  Wait. That was the spider—with next to no legs. Now where were those zombies?

  Before Maggie spotted them, the T-Rex’s head dipped, quick and sudden, like a stork after a frog.

  “No!” Karen screamed.

  Maggie clapped a hand to her mouth so she wouldn’t scream too. The lizard roared. Its head bobbed again. Up to the ceiling—boom! Down toward Zeke.

  Zeke swore. Metal clanged on metal. Every fiber of Maggie’s being—and her last iota of common sense—insisted she should run and hide. You didn’t stand up to a T-Rex. You just ran. And ran. And ran. The monster’s thick tail lashed, loosening concrete when it struck the wall.

  Maggie reeled back into the room before the cascade of pebbles hit her. The patter of gravel continued after the rocks quit falling, and it took Maggie a second to realize the sound was shuffling footsteps.

  The zombie moaned right before it clamped a hand on her shoulder.

  “Is that you sobbing down there?” the curator called. “Are you hurt?”

  Shit! Maggie smacked the zombie’s hand. Her nails dug into its flesh, tearing tendons, but she couldn’t break its grip. She flung herself at the ground, hoping to catch the zombie unaware.

  Its arm released in a sickening splorch.

  Released from its elbow, that was. The hand continued to grip her as the forearm dangled down her back.

  As if wraiths weren’t creepy enough.

  Maggie ducked and spun, the penlight held low like a dagger. The white beam danced on the monster’s moldering face. It stretched its arms toward her, but as it only had one left, Maggie was able to dodge.