The shade had led her here. That must have been what happened. Yet even as she had that thought, she began to doubt it. Alastair Horne had disappeared from his bedroom; and now both she and Alex had done the same. What if the shade hadn’t taken Alastair?
What if it was someone — or something — else?
Whatever that was could have been responsible for bringing Alex and her here. She was suddenly sure it was the same thing pretending to be John in her dream.
That wasn’t just some figment of her imagination. It had been playing her. When it looked at Alex in the dream, there had been real anger in its eyes. Alex seemed to see through the illusion.
She heard another branch break in the woods near the playground. Sara drew Alex close to her.
“Whoever’s there, I want you to just come out,” she said.
She thought there would be no response, but instead she heard the unmistakable sound of a man chuckling. The noise made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The wind carried the sound so that it seemed to come from all around her, as if there was a crowd of men just out of sight, laughing at her.
She needed to get out of there, and fast.
“Face me, you coward!” she screamed.
“But it’s so much better this way,” a voice answered. “Your fear is intoxicating. I never intended to bring you here. I thought I would leave you sleeping while standing in front of the window. But you insisted on coming with your boy. Now I’m happy you did. This is going to be so much fun.”
The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it.
“Who are you?”
There was another chuckle.
“The man who’s going to kill you and sell your son,” the voice answered.
She gripped Alex even tighter. She considered running in the other direction from the voice. Arguably her best chance was to blindly flee. But without knowing where she was and carrying an effectively unconscious child, there was no way she could outrun whoever was out there.
That left only one option — to stand and fight. Since she had no idea where she was, she didn’t think Soren or Ken would be able to track her down, so she couldn’t hope for rescue. She’d just have to defeat him on her own.
She was scared and vulnerable, but not defenseless. Sara had taken several self-defense courses over the past few years. She also took kickboxing as exercise, a choice for which she was now immensely grateful.
“Sell him?” she asked, playing for time.
She wanted to keep him talking and see if she could get a bead on his position, maybe develop some kind of strategy.
But when he responded, the voice seemed to shift position, moving elsewhere in the woods around her.
“What’d you think, I was Chester the Molester?” the voice asked. “No, no, I don’t swing that way. I only hunt special boys.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sara said.
“Of course you don’t,” the voice responded. “You live in a nice little suburban world, where the only things to worry your pretty little head about are the occasional homeless vagrants from D.C. Everything you read in the papers is true, the police are only a phone call away. A gun and a little self-defense training are all you need to protect you.
“But that world’s an illusion. It’s a pretty lie told so that you’ll accept your lot in life. The real world is a lot more dangerous, filled with creatures you can’t even conceive of. Some of them you know, you just think they’re stories. Others have never even been whispered about, and they like it that way. But they’re out there, watching you.”
“What does this have to do with Alex?”
There was another clang and she turned briefly to see the swings bang into each other again. She heard a furtive movement from the trees while she was distracted.
“Oh, you have quite a boy on your hands,” the voice said. “Quite an unusual child.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. Every mother thought her child was unique, and this was true for her and Alex, yet she didn’t think of him as “unusual.” He seemed normal and well-adjusted.
“How so?”
“He hasn’t told you, has he?” the voice responded. “I thought not. Boys like that seldom do. Alastair didn’t.”
“What do you know about Alex?”
The voice giggled. It sounded unstable and dangerous.
“The way he defied me in that dream, he may be more powerful than all the other boys I’ve taken,” the voice said. “I’m going to charge triple for him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And you never will. I’m going to take Alex, like I took Alastair. I won’t harm a hair on your son’s head, but the creature I sell him to will. I’m sorry to tell you that Alex will suffer. It’s part of the process.”
“What process?”
“Harvesting his power,” the voice said. “I don’t know much about it really. It’s better that way. I know they have to take his blood. They’ll drain him like a bathroom tub.”
“Vampires?”
“Oh please,” the voice said. “I wouldn’t be working for any creature that trite.”
“Why don’t you come out of that forest?” Sara said. “If you’re going to kill me, at least face me like a man.”
There was another soft, low chuckle.
“But I’m not a man,” the voice said. “Oh, I pretend to be one. I walk among you. I even got married a few years back, because I knew it would make my job so much easier. In the old days, you used to be able to lurk at soccer games or near playgrounds. But now everybody’s a busybody. They gather around you and ask you questions.
“So I changed strategies. I got married, adopted a kid — I told the wife through tears that I was sterile — and now I can hang around on playgrounds all I want. Nobody questions why I’m there. And I can find the special boys I need to. They’re few and far between, but that’s okay. I don’t need many, just one every few years so I can keep it going.”
“I know you, don’t I?” Sara asked.
He continued on as if she hadn’t asked the question.
“I’m what used to be called a dreamweaver. Then that insipid pop song came along and ruined everything,” the voice continued. “Now you can’t call yourself that without somebody singing along. We just call ourselves dreamers now, which is really a misnomer because we don’t dream, you do.”
“The dream of the fire,” Sara said. “You conjured it.”
“Well, I had to bring you here, didn’t I?” the voice answered. “And a good thing, too. Without you, the boy probably wouldn’t have come at all. I never expected that. He’s still trapped in that dream, but I can’t scare him. All I managed to do was tie him up.”
“I do know you,” she said. “I recognize your voice.”
There was a soft rustling of leaves from the forest and then a figure stepped forward. She couldn’t make out who it was at first — his face was barely human — but then she realized who it was.
Standing before her was Richard Frye.
Chapter Fourteen
Soren and Ken raced through the streets with the siren on top of the car blaring into the night.
Soren had only been in a police car the couple times he’d been arrested, so riding in the passenger side while the vehicle rocketed down the road was a new experience for him.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to savor it. He flipped on a car light so he could better see a book about mythological creatures. That and a small bag of a few items, what he thought of as Plan B, were all he’d brought with him.
The book would help him know what they were dealing with before they confronted it. If they went in totally unprepared, the creature would have the upper hand.
Soren heard Ken barking information into the police radio, but he tried to focus on the book.
Ken and he had already surveyed outside around the apartment, but they had quickly surmised it was pointless to try to follow the trail. Soren fo
und two sets of footprints in the garden bed by his bedroom window, but the trail ran cold as soon as they hit a sidewalk ten yards later. Alex and Sara seemed to have vanished completely after that.
The only positive sign was that Sara and Alex appeared to have been walking alone, at least initially. There were no other footprints with them. What worried Soren was the idea that they might have been picked up later. They could be anywhere by now.
Ken and he had jumped in the car after that. The detective had radioed Loudoun County police to help organize a search while they headed away from Soren’s apartment. The smart move would have been to start the search from there. Instead, they were following the single thin lead they had, the name and address of the Oregon woman pulled over for speeding near Glebe Elementary School. It was miles away from where Sara and Alex had disappeared, but both Ken and he had seized on it.
Soren knew that was a sign of their desperation, not confidence in the lead. Ken had offered to send an Arlington cop to the house instead, but Soren worried that whoever was sent would miss something. It was clear they weren’t dealing with an ordinary human kidnapper. If Soren’s hunch was right, the thing behind all this wasn’t human and could be even more dangerous than the shade.
Which meant that sending a regular old Arlington cop wasn’t going to help them. He could miss a vital clue or worse, face a monster he couldn’t possibly understand. Soren needed to go himself, and Ken refused to let him go alone. Of course if Soren was wrong and the lead went nowhere, it would mean they’d wasted valuable time.
Soren just wished he knew what monster had taken Sara and Alex. He called Terry as soon as they got in the car, but couldn’t reach the older man. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was two o’clock in the morning, well after office hours, and Soren didn’t have Terry’s home number. He would have to figure this out on his own.
He looked through the book Terry had given him, scanning entries quickly before moving on. He had been so focused on the shade, he hadn’t thought about other factors he should have been researching. He’d assumed that whoever took Alastair had broken into his room from the outside, even though there was no sign of forced entry. The other possibility — that Alastair had willingly opened the window and climbed out — hadn’t occurred to him.
But that was the only way Sara and Alex could have left. He’d locked the window before they went to bed, even flipping two small notches on the side of the pane that prevented the window from being opened more than a couple of inches. They were designed to stop small children from climbing out the window, but they would also thwart anyone from smashing the window and reaching in to open it from the outside.
They were too high up for Alex to reach, but Sara had apparently purposefully pressed the notches until they were flush with the pane and then unlocked the window. There was little doubt that the two of them climbed out together.
He did not believe she would have done so willingly, nor that an intruder at the window could have made a convincing case for Sara to unlock it.
That left one option: someone, or something, had hypnotized her and Alex into leaving. For some reason, he didn’t believe the shade was behind it.
As he frantically looked through his book, time was slipping away. He clenched one fist so hard he felt his fingernails breaking the skin. He had focused all his attention on the shade and not enough on what else might prey on a little boy.
He’d been sloppy and stupid, too caught up in squabbling with Ken and getting to the bottom of Peter Strode’s life and death. For a moment, he felt his stomach seize up as he felt the full magnitude of what was at risk.
He’d failed John Townes. And now he was about to fail Sara and Alex Townes as well. Everything he’d fought for over the past seven years would mean nothing. It was like staring into a black hole that threatened to swallow him.
He willed himself to think differently. He would not fail Sara. People hired him because he was the guy who could get the job done, no matter what he faced. This case might be personal, but it was no different.
He still had time to rectify his mistake. He just couldn’t afford to make any more.
He flipped through the names of monsters in the book, including shrills, gaunts, shirken and pretenders. But he knew those weren’t what he was looking for. He stopped at an entry for a trowe, a small, hairy beast that looked vaguely ape-like. There was a mention of possible hypnotic powers. But Soren dismissed it almost immediately. Whoever was behind this was able to pretend it was human and there was no mention that trowes could do so.
He found a promising entry entitled “Dreamwalkers,” creatures that could enter a person’s dreams. Once there, they could wreak havoc in a person’s consciousness, inducing cardiac arrest or other real physical problems. Soren studied the section on dreamwalkers for a while but eventually ruled them out too. They could hurt people, but they didn’t appear able to compel them to do anything. He needed something that could have forced Alastair and Sara to open their windows.
Still, the idea of a creature able to enter dreams was promising. He flipped to the next page and spotted the name “Dreamweaver.”
The description provided only basic information: these creatures were capable of projecting a dream onto a human being, effectively giving them control over the person’s actions in the waking world. If the dreamweaver wanted someone to get into a car and drive, for example, they simply conjured a dream in which it happened. They could even force someone to sleep against his or her will.
According to the book, dreamweavers had only a few limitations on their ability. They could not appear human while employing their powers and if a victim woke himself up from a dreamweaver-induced nightmare, the creature could not force him back to sleep. They could compel a target to sleep while miles away, but only if they had physical contact with their intended victim first. Otherwise, for a new target, they had to be close. Finally, their ability to make more than one target dream simultaneously was limited.
Below the description were two photos. One showed a normal human male, while the one next to it showed some kind of creature. The eyes were abnormally far apart and the nose was practically nonexistent. There were two long gashes along each side of his face. Soren realized the two photos were of the same person. The creature’s face was a distorted echo of the man’s. The message was clear — this thing could look human when it wanted to.
Soren knew there might be other possibilities for what had taken Sara and Alex, but this creature was an excellent candidate. It would explain why Sara and Alex willingly left his apartment. The dreamweaver led them to a place of his own choosing.
The car screamed into a small neighborhood just off Route 66 and pulled up to a red brick house. Ken was out of the car as soon as he parked. He sprinted to the front door and began pounding on it loudly.
Soren followed him, placing the book down on the seat. Maybe they would be lucky and Sara and Alex would be here.
It took a few moments before Soren saw movement behind a curtain by the door. Ken flashed his badge at it. He’d turned off the siren when they entered the neighborhood, but the car was still washing the house with pulses of red and blue light. It was obvious who he worked for, but he shouted it anyway.
“This is the Arlington County police department,” Ken said.
The door opened on a slight, obviously scared woman, who stared at Ken.
“Are you Muriel Frye?” Ken asked.
The woman nodded.
“Is Richard okay?” she asked. “Has something happened to him?”
Ken and Soren shared a look.
“Richard?” Ken asked. “Is he your husband?”
But Muriel didn’t answer right away.
“You were at the soccer game,” she told Ken. “I saw you. That man attacked you.”
The pieces of the puzzle finally settled into place. Sara had mentioned a friend named Richard who she’d seen at the game. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Apparently Ken came to same
conclusion.
“Is Richard here?” Ken asked.
“What’s going on?” Muriel demanded.
“Where is your husband?” Ken asked. “We need to speak to him right away.”
“He’s on a business trip,” she said. “It just came up this afternoon. He’s not supposed to be back for another two days.”
Soren felt his heart sink. He could see Ken grinding his teeth, sharing his frustration.
“Do you have any way to reach him?” he asked.
Muriel nodded and disappeared inside the house for a moment. She returned with a cell phone pressed against her ear. After a moment, she shook her head.
“His phone’s not on,” she said. “It’s late.”
“We need to know where he’s staying,” Ken said. “Quickly.”
“Is he in trouble?”
But Ken didn’t answer her.
“Do you know where he’s staying?”
She nodded and rattled off the name of a hotel in Baltimore. Ken checked his phone and called it immediately, handing his phone to Muriel.
“Get him on the line now,” he said.
Soren thought she might argue. Certainly he didn’t think Ken had any legal power to compel the woman. But she didn’t resist. Soren wasn’t entirely surprised. He knew from his own experience how much people tended to defer to cops.
Soren nervously tapped his foot on the porch. He could feel time slipping away. Frye was their man; he was sure of it.
Finally, Muriel looked at Ken apologetically.
“They say he checked in, but he’s not picking up,” she said.
“Send someone to check the room; tell them it’s an emergency,” Ken responded.
“He’s not there, Ken,” Soren said.
“We need to be sure,” Ken responded. “Once we do, I can get a warrant for his arrest.”
“Arrest?” Muriel said. “What on earth are you talking about?”
Ken and Soren ignored her.
“Fine, but we can’t wait around for that,” Soren said. “If he’s not here, it’s a good bet he has her and Alex already.”
Closed at Dark: A Soren Chase Novella (The Soren Chase Series) Page 9
