“We gotta go,” he said. “Don’t forget to breathe.”
The world and Zeke blipped out of existence like the floor dropping out from under her. When she blinked, her eyes opened to blackness. At least she assumed her eyes opened. Maggie fluttered her lashes, felt her eyelids click. She knew this place. Zeke had piggybacked her through while he’d been kissing her. At least she hadn’t arrived terrified.
Now she had to find him before the wraiths found her. He’d said they could hurt her and she had no idea how to shield.
This was and wasn’t like the dreamsphere from her sleep. She floated. Was she floating? No, she was on the loveseat. Hints of her body bled through her consciousness. Something solid supported her hip, her leg, her chest. Flashes of Hayden’s room, only it wasn’t Hayden’s room, because it was grey and distorted. Lumps under her, bindings around her, a familiar tug on her skin, and...
She couldn’t hold onto it. The world slipped to blackness. She made herself breathe, thinking the words. Inhale. Exhale. What if she suffocated? She’d never know. Was this what death was like?
She began to panic, her heart racing. What if a wraith materialized before Lillian returned and slashed their throats? What if the monsters found her before she found Zeke? Her brain whirled with so many fears it made her dizzy.
Dizzy like Zeke’s kisses.
Focus on their tangible, he’d said. Focus on his touch.
She remembered the way his body called to hers. She thought about his untidy blond hair, his grey eyes. Pictured the white scar on his chin. Invoked his scent, the sound of his drawl, the way his hands had stroked her possessively, lips against her neck.
She began to grow warm as she wondered what it would be like to have him inside her, thrusting and withdrawing as he stared into her eyes.
Warmth—she felt warmth. Magnetism. Zeke.
Arms formed around her. Zeke formed against her. “I’m here, Maggie.”
“I did it right?”
“You took your time,” he joked. “Had to wait two whole minutes to touch you again.”
The longer they held each other, the more the new dreamsphere swam into focus. Hayden’s room coalesced. Hayden wasn’t in it. The furniture was—the roof, the trash, the walls, the broken French door. Outside the room were flashes of black and grey wraiths, their hunger leaching into her safe space with Zeke.
Zeke bent and kissed her. His lips moved hotly across hers, the sensation vivid, reminding her she had a physical body to return to. “Ignore everything but me.”
The wraiths wailed. The walls bulged, morphing colors, lurid faces yawning in the wooden panels. She stared at Zeke’s lips instead. “Easier said than done. Maybe you should keep kissing me.”
“Can’t. We’re on real-time here.” He stood and drew her up beside him. He’d lost his weaponry—this being her dream, she supposed. She wound her arms around his neck, enjoying his lean, muscled body without a sword jabbing her gut.
His eyes glazed as he stared at something beyond the room they were in. He frowned. “I don’t understand. I can’t sense any conduits attached to you except the one we came through. It’s shut tight as a miser. Can you find it?”
She glanced at the loveseat where faint sparks blipped in one spot. “Yes. Now what?”
He led her to the balcony. She had to command her legs instead of imagine herself walking. Her bare feet thudded on the chilly floor. The formless wraiths curved away from them as they approached, as if plastered against an invisible sphere. She and Zeke looked over the dream-street below. A nightmare version of the neighborhood slowly took shape.
Houses shimmered into tall, eerie silhouettes with busted windows, dull colors, skewed roofs. They loomed too high, their peaks and gables leaning together as if threatening to collapse. As far as she could see, the street continued until it disappeared in haze. Ice coated everything. Frozen daggers hung from balconies and trees and phone wires. Wraiths flickered in the corners of her eyes.
It was cold. Maggie’s breath crystallized in the air and turned black. Like a wraith.
Startled, she jerked away. Her feet slid on the icy balcony and Zeke caught her before she fell. He batted at the formation until it dissipated.
“Focus on me like we discussed,” he told her. “That’s all you gotta do. Breathe and focus.”
“I see wraiths everywhere.”
“My shield is up. You’re safe.”
“I couldn’t see them when your shield was up before.”
“No.” He caught her chin and forced her face to his. “No fear. Look at me. Me. When you graduate from training, do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
“Give me a diploma?” Wraiths scented her, oozing from broken windows, out of the ragged cracks in the street. She tried to admire Zeke’s cheekbones and the tousle of his sun-tipped hair, but there were so many monsters. They could hurt her here. He’d said so.
“I’m going to undress you again, Maggie.”
That got her attention. “Is that so?”
“When you graduate. I’m going to undress you, and I won’t stop at your nightgown.” His hands slid along her body, over her satin-clad curves. Her pink robe hadn’t made it to the dreamsphere any more than his weapons.
He cupped her ass and pulled her against him, startling a gasp out of her. “I’m going to kiss my way down you until I’m between your legs. I want to taste your pussy. I’m going to slide my tongue inside you, in and out of you, all around you until you scream. And I’m going to do it again with my fingers. A third time with my cock.”
Maggie swallowed, hard, her mouth suddenly as dry as other parts of her were wet.
“You think about that while I do my job, okay?”
“Okay,” she managed, wondering if that was a standard tactic for teaching a disciple to focus—and not caring. It worked. She was now hyperfocused on Zeke’s mouth and fingers and, Lord help her, his cock.
“When I’m done with you the third time, I...” He trailed off. She strained to hear his mental whisper. “Hold up. That can’t be right.”
What couldn’t be right? Their post-graduation plans? Sounded right to her.
Then she sensed something too. Holes. Rips. Growing lesions.
Down the street? Up? Trying to spot a lesion was like staring at a dust mote. Whenever she thought she saw one, it slipped to the corner of her consciousness. Zeke’s fingers bit into her arms as he turned, searching every direction.
The entire dreamsphere quivered. Vibrations surrounded her and quickened in another area. “There.”
Scarlet. Several rifts in her dreamsphere, several spots of redness and spark. Eating away at the houses which crumbled over the edge. They united into a yawning whirlpool. Wraiths hurtled around it like slingshot stones toward her and Zeke. They gained form and function—zombies, ogres, vampires, horrible demons and man-beasts.
“Isn’t your shield up?” Maggie tried her best to imagine herself and Zeke behind a barrier, invisible, as the wraiths sought them. Nearer. Nearer.
“Perforations,” he spat. “They’re getting through to us. Shit, shit, shit.”
The sensation of the whirlpool overrode the sensation of the tangible bond. The vacuum was so strong it sucked the energy out of Maggie. The redness throbbed.
“Is that a conduit?” She felt like she was being turned inside out.
“Well, it ain’t a disturbance in the Force,” Zeke said grimly. “We got wraith blotches everywhere. Conduits. Barrier’s riddled with ’em. My God. It’s like nothing I’ve ever sensed before.”
“What are we going to do?”
“If I disappear, wake yourself. I told you how. Push the sphere like it’s going to crush you. Then keep pushing. Otherwise somebody’ll have to ECT you.”
“You said you’d stay with me.” His urgency chilled her. She panicked. Her emotion drew the wraiths. They whirled around her as if tasting her fear, brushing her like falling petals. “The ECT could kill me.”
A wraith
solidified and slammed into them. Black shards exploded around her and the world along with them. She lost track of Zeke. Was he gone? Dead? Was she?
Finally she sensed him, faint as an echo. “There’s a second dreamer, Maggie. I don’t know the signature, and I’ve got to geolocate her. Goddamn. Get yourself out. Tell Rhys and Lill—”
And he was gone. Fireballs of chaotic energy, darker than the rest, swarmed her, cutting off her air. Cutting off her escape.
Wraiths squeezed her. Slime and salt in her mouth, on her cheeks, on all her exposed skin. She choked and gagged. What was happening? She was too weighed down to run. The sphere sucked at her until she felt like her skin was going to implode.
Goo slid under her clothing and crammed itself between her legs. Freezing cold. Icy hot.
Evil infiltrated her. She felt wraiths tear through her into the terra firma in three nauseating surges.
She wanted out. She wanted them out. She wanted to kill them all.
She pushed.
Chapter Eight
Razors tore Zeke’s flesh, ripping him from the dreamsphere before he could triangulate the second dreamer’s manifestations. The attack had come from the front. Zeke shoved blindly with legs and feet and connected with something solid.
He opened his eyes and took in the scene. Three vamps, Whedon-style, with human bodies and horribly wrinkled faces. Those would be from his failure to shield Maggie, and there could be more. One held her splayed on the floor, while one appeared to be feeding on her brother. The last advanced on Zeke, its fingers bloody from wounding him.
Maggie yelled at the wraith, kicking and struggling. That meant she’d made it out of the dreamsphere despite his deserting her there.
Thank God. Zeke bellowed for his team, praying the others weren’t swarmed, and smacked the alert button on his belt radio.
The radio wasn’t there. Right—it was broken. Ignoring the fiery claw marks along his chest, he groped for the sword and bandolier he’d doffed when he’d piggybacked Maggie into the dreamsphere.
They weren’t handy, either. Could anything go half-right?
Yes. The vampire atop Maggie burst into a shower of dust. Maggie clambered to her feet, breathing hard. A stake trembled in her fist.
Zeke vaulted over the loveseat. As soon as he hit the floor, he shoved the sofa toward his attacker. The bandolier and sword had fallen on the other side—at the feet of the angry wraith.
Maggie hefted her stake and prepared to leap onto the vampire hovering over her brother.
“Maggie, get the hell out of here!” Zeke patted down his cargo jeans for throwing stars, stakes, guns. Whedon vamps took wooden stakes or head removal. Hard lump, left hip. Fumbling, he came up with a small dagger.
He flipped it, hard, into the vamp’s face as it rounded the loveseat. It howled when the blade struck. Zeke kicked the loveseat into the beast, knocking it on its ass.
Which wraith should he kill first? Hayden groaned weakly and batted at his attacker. The vamp punched his head, rendering him unconscious.
“Leave him alone!” With a yell, Maggie rushed the vampire who had her brother. The monster whirled and caught her before she could connect.
Its claws curved around her shoulders. She cried out, flailing. The vampire lunged for her neck. She shoved her stake into its mouth like a bit. Zeke reached his weapons and jerked a stake out of the bandolier.
Before he could use it, the first vampire leapt on his back. It pulled the lacerated flesh of his chest, its rank breath choking and hot.
He lunged forward and tackled the other vamp and Maggie anyway, driving his stake into the monster from behind. The pile of human and wraith went poof. One less wraith. They all thudded to the ground, the monster on his back clinging like a monkey.
Maggie struggled beneath him, her eyes wide with terror. The vamp sank its teeth into his shoulder. Blood splattered Maggie’s cheek.
“Get off!” She smacked at the wraith—ineffectively since she was pinned. The bloodsucker hadn’t gotten a good latch and Zeke wasn’t in danger. Yet.
But his team’s continued absence wasn’t a good sign. Lillian should have been back with the ECT by now.
How many wraiths had the mystery dreamer manifested? How many conduits had been opened? Was this a purposeful attack on his team?
Maggie cursed and fought, trying to reach the vamp on Zeke’s back. He heaved off her, somehow pushing himself upright despite the wraith gnawing on him like a dog on a bone.
She rolled to her feet too. In her fist was her can of pepper spray.
“Shut your eyes!”
Holy crap, this was not happening.
Zeke twirled and ran sideways, away from the capiscum, and slammed through a glass balcony door. The vamp took most of the crash, snarling. Zeke reached behind him and wrenched the monster’s head as its teeth ground into his flesh.
His fingers encountered the dagger hilt. He shoved it deeper into the creature’s face. With a wail the wraith released him and scrabbled at the knife.
Maggie advanced, her pepper spray aimed straight ahead. She reached the balcony. “I’ll spray it, you stake it.”
“Damn it, Maggie, back off with that shit.” The balcony door had been wooden. He yanked a piece free, the remaining shards of glass slicing his palm. The vamp skittered away until its yellow gaze lit on Maggie.
The creature charged. She shook the can and depressed the button. It sputtered itself empty, the thin stream not even reaching the vamp.
With a kick, Zeke whapped open an unbroken balcony door just as the creature reached it. Panes shattered. The wraith’s momentum shoved the door and Maggie into the room. She stumbled on trash and hit the floor. It tried to follow her, but Zeke was on it in two steps. With all his might, he drove the broken piece of door into its heart.
Pow.
He lunged through the powder cloud—all that remained of the vamp—and hoisted Maggie off the ground. “You’re crazy. What were you thinking?”
“Your neck, your chest.” Her hands fluttered over his wounds. She grabbed a T-shirt from the floor and pressed it to a puncture on his shoulder. Blood, his blood, dotted her pajamas, her robe, her face. She lifted a red-smeared hand to his cheek. “You should have worn your vest.”
He gave a pained laugh. “Considering you ditched it the first minute I turned my back, I can’t argue with that.”
“Do you need a doctor?”
“No. I just need a minute.” He was light-headed. Blood loss, relief or Maggie’s proximity? Without stopping to consider how stupid it was to kiss her when another wraith could materialize at any minute, he threaded his hands into her hair and captured her lips.
She met him halfway, pushing herself closer. Her taste, coppery with his blood, set his heart pounding. His wounds throbbed. So did the tangible, tightening between them until it felt like they could join with their clothes on.
Someone cleared his throat behind them. Zeke broke free.
Lillian and Rhys stood in the doorway, holding swords and the ECT, every bit of them dusted with wraith sand.
“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes,” Lillian chided him, “without you getting snacked on by vampires and kissing your students.”
Zeke didn’t fall for Lillian’s bait. Not enough time to quip. “There’s a second dreamer. Someone’s got to geolocate her. She’s close. I didn’t have time to triangulate.” Locating a dreamer responsible for a manifestation required a combination of quick checks into the dreamsphere and matching whatever scene the scanner had logged with a physical location.
“We figured that out too.” Rhys safeguarded the doorway while Lillian hustled to Hayden’s bed and opened a first aid kit. “HQ noticed the manifestations as part of the routine scan and discounted them because we’d just collared somebody in this area. They put two and two together when we reported in. They’re sending backup.”
“The signature had no tag.” Zeke held the T-shirt against his wounded shoulder. “Could be a neo
, but with a targeted flow of wraiths like this, it’s probably an assault. It’s definitely past first manifestation.”
“An assault?” Rhys asked. “Who the hell would use wraiths to come after us?”
“A psycho,” Lillian growled, busy with Maggie’s brother.
Maggie’s shoulder brushed Zeke’s arm. In a low voice, she asked, “That Karen person?”
Zeke felt a moment of dread at the thought, but there was no way. He knew Karen’s signature too well. “Not possible.”
“Shit, Zeke. Take my radio and call the team.” Rhys’s posturing from earlier disappeared; he might have aspirations, but his first concern—everyone’s first concern—was saving lives. “Or do you want me to go in?”
“No, I want you fighting. I’ll send Mel in. He’s sneakier. I’ll have someone contact Karen’s guards, just in case.” Zeke caught the walkie and flicked it on, giving orders. With the manifestation site this close, a scanner would only need five minutes, tops, to triangulate.
“What’d you kill in here?” Rhys asked, accepting the radio from Zeke with only a tiny scowl at the blood smears. “Out there we had vamps and zombies. Bunch of ’em. I lost count.”
“We had three from Maggie. Whedons. They came through while we were tranced.” Zeke wobbled a little and Maggie slipped under his arm to support him.
“I felt them use me,” she said, her voice rich with disgust. “I hope I never experience that again.”
“There were no other conduits linked to Maggie,” Zeke confirmed. He verbalized the logistics, partly for Maggie’s benefit and partly for his own. His understanding fuzzed at the edges as blood loss—he was pretty sure it was blood loss—affected him. “I bet her only manifestations this whole time have been the Whedon vamps. The manifestations during Lillian’s shift were Maggie’s plus the other dreamer’s.”
“Five Whedons that time,” Lillian confirmed from beside the brother. “The rest Nosferatus.”
Tangible (Dreamwalker) Page 10
