Dreamwalker

by Russell James

  A dreamwalker.

  He mentally grabbed the energy stream and pulled hard. From the seat on front of him, Estella screamed.

  The other dreamwalkers froze, faces impassive, automatons placed on pause. Estella’s nails dug into the arm rests of her chair.

  Cauquemere pounced. From behind her, one hand swooped down around her throat and squeezed. Her head banged against the seatback. He combed the fingers of his other hand through her hair and pulled it back behind her ear. He bent closer. His dreadlocks brushed her face.

  “Estella,” he whispered. “What have you been hiding?”

  His left hand grabbed her forehead and he forced his consciousness through hers, like a net through the ocean. The seine caught up flashes of thoughts. One minnow tried to escape. He caught it.

  “Little Sister!” he said in triumph. “The elusive bitch who arrived uninvited to my city. You’ve been hiding her from me.” He gripped her neck tighter until his fingernails drew blood. “Of course you’d keep her from me. You know the fun I’ll have at her expense.”

  “No,” Estella whimpered.

  “Don’t worry,” Cauquemere said. He released his grip on her throat. “You’ll have a front row seat. I love a touching reunion.” He licked her warm blood from his fingertips.

  Without Estella’s protection, Rayna’s life force stood out like a flare in the night sky. Cauquemere’s thoughts sent a squadron of gunner Jeeps to converge on her location.

  Cauquemere straightened his cap. Checkmate in two moves. Tiny was working over Prosperidad, Pete’s protector in the corporeal world. In moments, he would have Rayna, Pete’s Twin Moon City contact, at bay. Alone and unaware of his power, the boy was doomed in both worlds.

  An evil smile crept across Cauquemere’s lips as an even more delicious idea presented itself. Why annihilate the boy? This table in the Hall of Dreamwalkers could seat five quite nicely. Cauquemere’s empire would expand far faster, especially with Rayna as leverage over two dreamwalkers.

  He vanished from the palace and reappeared in the front hallway of a shell-shocked apartment building in Twin Moon City. The battered husk of a drugstore stood across the street. Inside shone the bright little soul light he was about to extinguish.

  “It won’t be easy,” Rayna said. “And I guarantee it won’t end well.”

  “Nothing about this place will end well,” said Tod Washington.

  He sat on the floor beside Rayna against the battered prescription counter. What was left of his golf shirt and khakis were little more than rags, though he hadn’t been here long. He still carried himself with the strength he had when running the Harlem Renaissance Bank in the tactile world. “At least I’ll finish this on my terms with some self-respect.”

  Rayna put a hand on his shoulder and smiled. He was her third. She pointed down to a map she’d drawn on the back of a dirty Valentine’s Day card from the rack on Aisle Two.

  “You’ll wait here,” she said. She pointed to one of the blocks in the simple diagram. “I’ll have weapons stored in the basement. Hold off until the explosion draws the hunters. The rest is up to you.”

  Tod nodded in assent.

  “Payback is a bitch,” he said. “I’ll go down taking a few bastards with me.”

  The scream of a gunner Jeep filled the air outside the drugstore.

  “We’d better move,” Rayna said. “You first.”

  Tod gave her a firm handshake, stood, and ran to the shop’s back door. He opened it and immediately slammed it closed. He dropped to the floor.

  A fusillade of gunfire turned the wall into splinters. One-inch holes opened up in the metal door. Machine gun rounds rearranged the store’s debris.

  “Goddamn it!” Tod yelled.

  The building had no side exits. The front door was their only hope. Rayna cursed herself for not scouting a better location. She ran up the aisle. Tod dashed in a crouching run to the front of the store.

  As he touched the front door, the blinding lights of a parked gunner Jeep halted the two fugitives in place. The wild laughter of rabid hunters flitted in through the missing windows. There had to be a dozen of them, their numbers hidden behind the spotlight’s glare. She and Tod scrambled backward until pinned against a ragged, empty display for Valentine’s candy.

  The front door flew open and three hunters strode in, weapons at the ready. Combat and decay had reduced these long-timers to near skeletons. Unidentifiable unctuous rags draped their bodies. Their eyes burned bright and unrestrained within the shadows of their backlit heads. They bayed like hyenas at a kill. The three positioned themselves across the front of the store.

  The one opposite Tod raised his machine gun and opened fire. He walked a stream of bullets from the floor and up between Tod’s legs. The rounds disintegrated a vertical strip of his body from crotch to neck. Flesh, organs and bone fragments sprayed Rayna’s side. She screamed. The remnants of Tod’s body hit the floor with a wet thud, two separate halves.

  She looked at his severed body in shock. Then she stared the hunters down and waited for her end to come.

  Instead, a shadow entered the store behind the hunters. Rayna’s first wild, irrational hope was of Pete coming to the rescue. Then she saw the outline of the peaked officer’s cap and the flowing duster coat.

  “Little Sister Rayna,” Cauquemere said as his face came out of the shadows. “We finally meet. Awful manners of you to enjoy my hospitality uninvited. That will cost you. How nice that your sister gave you up.”

  Rayna’s jaw dropped. “She’d never do that.”

  “Oh, yes she would,” Cauquemere said, “and did. Sold you out to save some old boyfriend I haunted. We both thought it an excellent trade.”

  Rayna didn’t believe it. Estella would never…but then how else would Cauquemere know she was Estella’s sister?

  “Now, dear,” Cauquemere said. “Where might I find your boyfriend, Pete?”

  Rayna’s fortitude began a slow collapse. He knew about Pete. Estella betrayed her.

  She said nothing. However badly this was going, she wouldn’t betray Pete.

  “No matter,” he said. “Cooperation isn’t really necessary.”

  Two hunters moved forward and bracketed Rayna. With the muzzles of their weapons, they pushed her to within a foot of Cauquemere. It felt like standing face to face with a starved wolf. His breath smelled like a crypt. She fought to hold her fear in check.

  Cauquemere reached up and held his hand over her forehead. An orb like a big soap bubble formed in his outstretched fingers.

  Rayna felt someone, or something, sweep across her mind, like a breeze raising ripples on a lake as it blew in. The wave extracted all her memories, flipped them over and shoved them back in place. The succession was as quick as a chill going up her spine. Everything she knew had just been downloaded. She felt raped.

  Cauquemere pulled the orb closer and studied it. Inside she saw quick images of herself and Pete. Talking on the office rooftop by the palace. Running the mirror through the city. Pete describing the attack. It was the whole rescue plan.

  Cauquemere cupped her chin in his free hand, still holding the orb aloft. He gave her a look of false concern.

  “Rifles and bombs and magic mirrors,” he said. “How steeped in the tactile world. An intricate plan that will go nowhere.” He squeezed the orb in his hand. It popped with the sound of breaking glass and the fragments vanished. “As we speak, a team is turning that mirror into a thousand pieces of nothing. See how quickly I erase what you work so hard to complete?”

  Everything within Rayna sagged. Cauquemere raised his hand to her forehead again and drew out another orb. Another wave of memory rifling coursed through her mind.

  “I see Pete is not her. Still on the other side.” He looked deeper into the orb. “But something else is here. Something Pete gave you…”

  Ra
yna’s eyes widened. It would be all over of he discovered…

  “The key,” he announced.

  He took his hand from her chin and held it outstretched. The key in Rayna’s rear pocket slid free and flew into Cauquemere’s palm. The golden key glittered in the Jeep’s bright spotlights. It spun one revolution and then pointed to Cauquemere’s right.

  “Well, this will be easy to follow,” he said. “Your sister betrays you, now you betray Pete. What a family.”

  Cauquemere folded his fingers around the key. Rayna’s heart dropped into a void of infinite despair.

  “Take her to the palace,” Cauquemere said to the hunters on his left. “Lock her somewhere safe.” He turned to the remaining hunter. “You, get the rest of your squad and follow me. We’re making a house call.”

  The hunters cackled. Their skeleton jaws clacked back and forth. Cauquemere left the building with one hunter in tow. The other two forced Rayna to the door with the barrels of their machine guns. The one to her right kicked Rod’s remains out of the way.

  The bright glare of the Jeep headlights blinded her and she stumbled. She didn’t care what happened next. She envied the peace Tod Washington had found.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The new day was hours old by the time Pete finally fell asleep on Prosperidad’s couch. When his dream kicked in, he sat on a large, flat rock beside a stream in a gorge in Ithaca. Clear, cold water rushed by and air conditioned the humid summer air. The steep gorge walls soared over a hundred feet high and displayed the layers of rock in clear relief. Towering pines fringed the top of the gorge, and the overhead sun washed the floor in daylight. It was the perfect place to sit and talk. He thought Rayna would love it.

  Time passed and Rayna didn’t arrive. She invariably showed up soon after a dream began, never fashionably late. Pete started to worry, then blamed paranoia. He had no way to measure time in this world. Sometimes hours of dreams took only moments, sometimes the reverse. He needed to calm down. Rayna would arrive.

  He paced the stream bank. No, something was wrong. He could feel it. He’d have to find her, and there was only one place to start looking. He was physically and emotionally spent. He wasn’t up for the rollercoaster ride that always awaited in Twin Moon City. But he’d have to be.

  Pete forced himself awake.

  With a start, he was back on the couch in Prosperidad’s. The house was still dark and quiet. He wondered what time it was. He closed his eyes, focused on the mansion, and drifted back to sleep.

  When the world again came into focus, he caught his breath. Complete devastation surrounded him.

  He stood on the wooden floor of the mansion’s main entrance, the only portion still intact. The roof and main walls were reduced to smoldering studs. The main staircase rose only three steps high, with just sad remnants curving up beyond, splintered and broken against the gray sky. The overpowering, thick smell of charcoal and sulfur made his eyes water.

  Profound loss gripped Pete. The mansion had always been with him, growing as he did, a constant in the shifting world of dreams he visited every night. A cousin, no, a brother, was gone.

  Pete stepped over to where the sunroom had been. The tile floor remained but the plants were blackened stubs, as if raked with a flamethrower. His favorite room in his favorite house, incinerated. He wondered if anything survived.

  The weapons!

  Pete hopped the partial walls of the mansion to the trap door.

  He barely recognized what lay there, a twisted pile of melted steel and plastic. M-16 barrels pointed out of the heap at crazy angles. Liquefied hand guards and butt stocks dripped over the mass like drizzled chocolate syrup. The stockpile looked microwaved. The explosive timer was nowhere to be found, probably used to destroy his own mansion. Then it got worse.

  On the top of the slagheap of weapons rested Rayna’s gold key.

  He sank down to the charred floorboards. There was only one person who’d use this as a calling card. Cauquemere.

  In a panic, Pete tried to focus and recreate the rifles. He closed his eyes and visualized them, creating a vivid, detailed picture in his mind of a row of shining weaponry. He forced that image into the house, to let the mansion give birth to his vision.

  But the image sailed out into space. There was nothing to catch it. Cauquemere’s violation of the place had destroyed the magic within.

  Pete stumbled back to the mansion foyer. He sat down in a daze on the lower step of staircase’s remnants. Everything was gone. St. Croix had taken Prosperidad. Cauquemere captured Rayna. His mansion and his plans to rescue Estella lay in ruins. He had no place to go. A visit to Twin Moon City promised a hunter welcome committee. Too much time on the streets in Atlantic City would get him an adjoining room with Prosperidad.

  Game over.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Prosperidad hung limp in The Chair’s bindings. She hadn’t seen daylight since entering Island Cabs. Moments of torture seemed like hours and her time within these walls already seemed eternal.

  Repeated beatings delivered by St. Croix and his men had mushroomed her lips and nose. Shattered blood vessels squeezed her eyes nearly closed. Her headscarf was gone and tendrils of sweaty hair hung in her face. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth.

  “This could be easier,” Stoner said, standing next to her. “You heard the Boss. He said stop once you gave up the boy. What do ya say? Tell me, and all the pain goes away.”

  Only a muffled version of Stoner’s request got through. He’d burst her left eardrum and white noise filled that side of the room. She still got the message, loud and clear.

  She peered at him through the slits she had left for eyes, barely able to raise her head to make contact.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I…don’t…know.”

  Stoner crossed his arms over his chest and sighed.

  “Too bad you want to take that route.”

  He picked up two black leather gloves from St. Croix’s desk. As he slipped them on, flecks of dried blood flaked onto the floor. He flexed his fingers and made a fist.

  “Anytime you change your mind,” he said, “just say the word.”

  Destiny had taught Prosperidad the big lesson already. What is foretold must unfold. She’d broken the code. She’d endure what was coming. She owed it to Tommy.

  She closed her eyes and tried to find somewhere safe for her mind to hide. She conjured up her grandmother’s house on the lake in the Dominican Republic. A cooling breeze blew her hair from her face. Her grandmother stood beside her, a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  “It won’t be long now,” her grandmother said.

  Prosperidad placed her hand over her grandmother’s. She knew. She’d seen the future. Hers was empty.

  Stoner reached down, grabbed her jaw, and angled her head for the next blow.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Rayna sat slumped against the palace wall. A torch marginally lit her windowless cell’s interior. Rough-cut granite block walls surrounded the concrete slab floor. Only a crossbeam secured the heavy wooden door on the other side, but that was as good as a time-locked safe to Rayna. The hunters had dragged her up many flights of stairs, so she had to be in one of the towers.

  She rested her head against the wall. The last time she felt this awful was when Estella died. At that moment, her life disintegrated. That point of desperation was just that, a single fleeting point. In minutes, she’d found a solution. She’d ravaged the medicine cabinet, mixed her fatal martini, and followed her sister over. An escape presented itself immediately.

  This time was different. There wasn’t the dimmest hope that she or her sister would ever leave this palace. Not while their souls contained an amp of energy. Dreamwalker or not, Pete would never get past the zombie hunters whirling around the palace walls.

  Losing Pete’s key was an even worse blow. He
said it was a guide to a safe place, hidden from Cauquemere. Not any longer. When Cauquemere finished with it, it would make Twin Moon City look like paradise. And if Pete was there when that happened…

  Pete’s death was too horrible to contemplate. She had more than enough known disasters without adding those that were only possible.

  Now, instead of being an asset to Estella outside the walls, she was a liability within, a powerless pawn in Cauquemere’s game of control. Nothing she had done, even the life she sacrificed, had made the situation better. Instead, she’d made it all far worse.

  She stretched out on the stone floor. The cold soaked through her clothing and made her spine ache. She thought how awful it was to be unable to die.

  Estella sensed Rayna’s presence in the palace. Once, she had yearned to feel her so close. Now the sensation filled her with dread. One slip from Estella, one hint of subterfuge, and Rayna would pay the price. Estella had gone from shielding her sister from Cauquemere’s eternal torture to ensuring it.

  The glimmer of hope that Pete had lit was extinguished. He had only the heart, not the skills, of a great dreamwalker. He’d be no match for Cauquemere. He’d benefitted from the shield she’d thrown up around Rayna. Now hunters would track him seconds after arrival in Twin Moon City. He’d never make it into the palace as anything but a corpse, or worse, a captive.

  How long could she last here, conjuring evil around the clock? She stared at the gaunt faces and ragged, gray hair of the other dreamwalkers at her table. She’d eventually look like them. Worse, she’d feel like them, all the humanity and all the passion within her crushed under the weight of the misery she inflicted on others.

  She wondered if miracles ever found their way this deep into hell.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The mansion’s ruins were no refuge now. Pete forced himself back awake.

  Dim daylight crept into Prosperidad’s living room. Though the sunlight claimed he slept through until morning, he didn’t feel rested. He was as tired as he’d felt last night, maybe more so.