Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2

by Jody Wallace

  “I’d like to give you the gift, Zeke.” Karen’s eyes glinted. “The gift of eternal life. Let me teach you before you matriculate me. They don’t have to know.”

  Zeke’s eyebrows rose of their own accord. “Eternal life? Come on.”

  “Well, I can’t be positive,” she said coyly. At least she wasn’t sniveling. She began rubbing his forearm. The tangible felt like it was pulling his arm hair, and he tried not to flinch. “I haven’t had the opportunity to test whether I’m going to age. I’m only twenty-seven. Quite a bit younger than your other student.”

  “I’m not sure how old she is,” he lied. “I think, like, forty-eight?”

  He heard Lill snort. Karen frowned.

  About what? Had she heard Lill laugh?

  “Something wrong?” he asked her.

  “I sense…” She gazed toward the top of their bubble, where fewer wraiths congregated. It was odd to be here without the near-complete blackness that followed Maggie. Pearlescent gray gleamed beneath their feet. He had no trouble seeing Karen or the others. The unformed wraiths were sparse enough to count separately instead of a black wall of hatred and mush.

  When Karen stared at him again, her eyes seemed to glow like the swirly parts of the dreamsphere. “Zeke, I sense evil.”

  So did he. It was stuck to his arm like wet toilet paper.

  “Whereabouts?”

  She waved a reedy arm toward Lill’s point of the star. “That way.”

  “You think your guy is nearby?” He braced himself. If a boss wraith was about to attack, they couldn’t be more ready. Now they could find out what the hell was going on.

  Karen’s breathing accelerated. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints.

  “Evil,” she whispered. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “No.” Goddammit. Nobody else could link with Karen and keep an eye on her, but her claim of approaching evil called for a geoscan.

  “Somebody needs to go deep,” he told the others. “See if we got a bogey. Karen’s saying some shit about evil approaching.”

  “Constance,” Adi said. “Scan for us, standard grid. We need Zeke to remain hands-on with Karen.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  The L5 dropped out of the network and locomoted in a circular pattern, scouring the immediate area for conduits, presences and signatures. She soon departed visual range but not oratory and included them in the feedback of the geoscan imagery. Trance scans were like flying over a terrain map, except all the terrain was gray and identical. Far off in the distance there were white sparks—a locked conduit, a signature.

  Maggie?

  No.

  “On duty orator.” Constance’s mind voice was muted. Farther than the on duty orator, she located a few registered scanners. No looming demon. No Master. No evil. “I’ll keep searching.”

  Zeke tried to concentrate on Constance, but Karen plastered herself against him. Her thin form seemed to have a hundred arms and the strength of a professional weight lifter. He couldn’t wriggle free. The tangible threatened to override his link with the others.

  “There’s no evil,” he told Karen. “I’m right here. You don’t have to strangle me.”

  “He’s coming.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him, trying to scrabble atop him like a drowning victim. He staggered and cursed. “He’s coming he’s coming he’s coming to eat her we have to get out of here he’ll eat us too!”

  “None of us sense him. Our shields protect us from all wraiths, including your buddy. Chill out.” He pried her off him, half-surprised there was no suction release noise. Her weight was inconsequential, but this much bodily contact was turning his stomach.

  “Why is she panicking?” Adi demanded. “Are you hurting her, Zeke?”

  “Hell, no.”

  Karen’s hands fisted in his hair. He growled. That would make it really hard to shove her away. He tried anyway.

  Her eyes bugged out of her head, she began to hyperventilate. “He’ll devour her. Use her as a portal.”

  “Who will he use—Constance?” Zeke asked, letting go of her hands.

  “No, the other one. The girl.” She could barely mind-speak as her breath whooped in and out of her. “We’re dead, we’re dead.”

  Since Lill hadn’t used the code sentence, he’d assumed Maggie wasn’t asleep yet. Adi had specifically not wanted Maggie mentioned and had forbidden Zeke to have any contact with her. Everyone, it seemed, remembered Karen’s legendary jealousy.

  But Karen’s intense reaction, her obvious dread of something none of the rest of them could sense, alarmed him. The others watched the drama inside his shield with worried expressions.

  “He can’t eat Maggie. She’s not asleep yet.” If he knew Maggie—and he did—once she hit the sphere, she’d be as close to their experiment with Karen as she could get. She’d stand right next to Lill—visible or not.

  Awesome. If Maggie was present but invisible, she could be watching Karen climb him like a tree and claim they were all dead.

  Karen’s hot breath wafted over his neck, a vampire ready to bite. “She is here, but he has possessed her. This time she won’t survive. Get us out, Zeke, before he turns his attention to us. Get us out. Get us out. I’m sure the girl would want you to live.”

  As Karen gibbered, Zeke snapped at Lill. “Is Maggie here or not?”

  “Not,” Lill answered. “Waiting for her—got a channel open. Bet she’s having trouble falling asleep with a bunch of soldiers staring at her.”

  “We need to be sure,” he told Lill. Was Maggie awake or was her signature being hidden again?

  “Why are you worrying about her? She’s weak. A lost cause.” Karen, with the same surprising strength, shook Zeke. His teeth snapped. “But you’re not lost, Zeke. You have to live. Save us.”

  To hell with it. Zeke shoved Karen away from him. “Hands to yourself.”

  “Don’t do this,” she begged. “Don’t look for her. Don’t sacrifice yourself.”

  “Quit being so melodramatic.” Damn, he hated clingy people. “I just gotta—”

  “Make no contact with the girl,” Adi barked in his mind, echoing Karen. “That’s an order, sentry.”

  Zeke tried anyway. Without locomoting, which would disrupt the link network, he opened his psyche to the scanning frequency. “Maggie. Maggie. Answer, dammit!”

  Where was she? He cast his brain wide—and nothing.

  He couldn’t geoscan while stationary, but he should be able to sense people he was close to, metaphysically and emotionally. Students. Friends.

  Lovers.

  After another moment of mental cursing and straining, something glimmered far, far on the edge of his range. He focused on it. How’d she get all the way out…

  No, that was Chao. What the fuck? He could sense Chao but not Maggie?

  God, he hoped she had insomnia.

  “Houston, we have a problem. I can’t communicate with Constance anymore.” Lill’s announcement returned Zeke to the here and now. He snapped out of his deepened trance with a grunt. Karen cringed toward him like a frightened dog, huddled and miserable.

  “She’s not far enough in her search pattern for you to have lost contact,” Adi said. “Sergeant Roberts, please go after Constance. The rest of you, concentrate on what we came here to do.”

  As the other L5 obeyed, a sense of foreboding filled Zeke. He wanted to lock Karen in a closet—somewhere she couldn’t touch him. He wanted to check on Maggie. He didn’t give a shit that they’d made zero progress toward Adi’s goal.

  “I don’t like this,” he broadcast.

  “Get us out,” Karen chanted, mentally and verbally. Her lips moved against the skin of his arm. The dreamsphere inside his shield swam with ripples of sound. Fear skittered up his spine. He hated to agree with Karen on anything, but he wanted out of the sphere. />
  “Tell Karen to open herself to me,” Adi said. “She swore she’d cooperate in return for my assistance. She hasn’t even tried. Does she think I’m a fool?”

  Adi was right—Karen had made no effort whatsoever to uphold her end of the bargain. He jostled the woman cowering in his arms. “Before we go, Adi wants you to at least try, Karen.”

  But Karen was beyond reason. “He has two. Will he never be satisfied? He’s, God, he’s strong, he’s coming fast. Get us out. You have to get us out.”

  “Make her do it,” Adi commanded. “Make her.”

  “Get us out.” When Karen’s frantic, babbling lips mashed against his neck, Zeke’s pulse stuttered.

  “Is she cooperating?” Adi asked urgently. “I sense a shift in her signature. I’m going to…”

  Zeke lost the thread of Adi’s mind voice when his ears began to buzz. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. The urge to bolt gripped him, sharp and unrelenting, yet he remained frozen. He couldn’t remember why he was here.

  “Get us out,” Karen demanded.

  Right. She was right. They had to escape. Danger was coming. Its bleak presence churned around them like gale force winds. He couldn’t sacrifice himself, for Maggie or anyone. He could fight this evil better from the outside.

  “I can’t make Karen do anything,” he told Adi with a harsh gasp that hurt his throat. “Look, we need to regroup. It isn’t safe here.”

  Zeke found his center and his conduit and prepared to ditch dreamspace, dragging Karen with him.

  Unexpectedly, he found his path barred.

  Vigil-blocked. What the hell?

  Dumbfounded, he stared at Adishakti. The small woman, not yet drooping, stood with her hands pressed against his shield. The foggy mists of wraith swirled around her, thickening. While they’d all been arguing, more wraiths had risen around them as if from the depths.

  The blackness grew, and Adi’s expression darkened.

  Danger wasn’t coming. Danger was here.

  “Karen must complete the training.” Vigil-blocks, difficult and fatiguing, temporarily sealed the dreamspace barrier in a small geographical area. Adi’s use of one was flabbergasting. The treacherous, brute force move, which could accidentally vigil-trap alucinators in the sphere, wasn’t her style. At all. “We may not have another opportunity. This is crucial, Zeke. I won’t harm you. Be still.”

  He felt Adi’s mind press into him, more intense than any assessment, and through him into Karen. How could she manage that?

  And then it hurt too much to do anything but grab his head and curse Adi’s name.

  Karen screamed.

  “What are you doing?” He vaguely noted Lillian yelling beyond the white-hot periphery of Adi’s invasion. “Fuck me, Adi, you’ve locked us in here.”

  “Ms. Sharma, this is against regulation,” Blake said, shocked.

  Moisture wet Zeke’s upper lip. The coppery whang of his own blood hit him along with a second splash of pain. Karen slid down his body until she crouched at his feet.

  He quickly followed. Dear God, what was Adi doing? It was like nothing he’d ever experienced—nothing he’d ever known could happen.

  His shield wavered. Collapsed. Karen rolled into a ball as if her thin arms could protect her from whatever Adi was trying to do to her via Zeke. Her keening wail nearly drowned out Lill’s tirade.

  “He’s bleeding. Zeke’s bleeding. Is the terra firma under attack, or are you doing that? You could fucking trap us in here. What the hell, Adi, unblock us right now.”

  Zeke staggered to his feet, safe from the wraiths thanks to Adi, Lill and Blake’s shields positioned around them in a protective triangle, but that wouldn’t last. Monsters swirled. Chaos mounted. The air dimmed until the only illumination came from their feet. It was almost as if Maggie had arrived, dragging her constant horde of wraiths with her.

  Was Adi the danger he’d sensed? Or was it Maggie’s flock? What about Karen’s Master?

  He could only deal with one danger at a time, and Adi seemed to be the danger intent on tearing his brain apart.

  He wiped his hand through the blood on his face and shoved it toward the vigil. “Thought you said you wouldn’t hurt me?”

  Adi’s face crumpled. His pain disappeared. She opened her mouth to speak when suddenly she catapulted through the dreamsphere. Her body disappeared behind a black curtain of wraiths.

  A blob of blackness, a concentration of wraiths so fierce it quivered, blasted the other wall of wraiths to bits. More harsh keening assaulted his ears, and it wasn’t Karen. In the broken-apart swirls, he spotted Adi in an awkward heap.

  Other heaps, bodies, sprawled next to her.

  The shadow monsters regrouped, closing ranks, cutting off his view. Blake’s shield parted from Lill’s with a pop like a rubber glove, and he zipped toward his boss. That left only Lillian between Zeke, Karen and the wraiths, and one shield couldn’t function as a defensive line against this many monsters.

  With a grunt, he reformed a wobbly shield, undersized and probably perforated, around him and Karen. His head throbbed. Beneath him, the block on the dreamspace barrier faded. That meant Adi had deliberately lifted it, had been knocked unconscious—or was dead.

  The wraiths closed in, and he knew his shield wouldn’t last long. Fuck. If only the damned shrieking would stop. Karen’s misery had softened into whimpers, but the horrid screams echoing all around them jabbed into his head almost as painfully as Adi had.

  Zeke checked on Lill. Her hands covered her ears. It did little good in here, but the instinct was hard to break.

  “Gotta go,” he sent to her. “I’ll get Karen out.”

  “Leave her to die,” Lill snarled. “Karen did something to Adi. I know it. I need to help Blake. The wraiths have gone crazy. I don’t know if he can piggyback Adi out of here.”

  “No, Adi did something to us.” Zeke knew Adi was Lillian’s best friend, and the vigil’s shitty behavior would be hard for his fellow sentry to accept. “I hate to say it, but Karen’s the victim this time. I gotta yank her out of the sphere and get her ass lobotomized like she wanted in the first place.”

  “What about Maggie?” Lill asked. “Do you think her signature’s hidden? We know it happened once.”

  “I hope your first guess was right—she’s not asleep yet.” Zeke gathered Karen carefully into his arms. She curled against his chest like a baby animal. “Let’s hit the terra firma and find out.”

  He came awake to a room full of chaos.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maggie knew she was supposed to have a natural sleep session in the sphere. Her first time in phase two—all alone. She was supposed to stay out of the way. Let the trained alucinators deal with Karen, Karen’s mythical Master, the allegedly sentient wraiths, and the code one situation Maggie may or may not have caused. The trancers’ mission was not her mission, despite the fact Zeke was a part of it.

  When insomnia hit, though, she couldn’t bear it. She placed the dagger the guards had allowed her to keep within reach, curled up on her cot, and tranced into the dreamsphere anyway.

  She needn’t have worried about accessing it without Zeke to guide her. She zipped into the sphere as if she’d already been trained to do it.

  Unfortunately, a glob of wraiths, so thick it was like they’d been waiting for her, nearly jumped her before she could toss up a shield. It took several panicked, claustrophobic moments to situate herself. Wraiths crowded her tiny bubble, pushing and slavering.

  The wraiths—if they got to her—would kill her. It would be her own stupid fault. Sure, she might be a bellatorix, but she wasn’t about to stake her life on it.

  Bad idea, Mags. Bad idea.

  One she’d rectify as soon as possible. Maggie huddled, cursed, and tried to collect herself enough to escape. It wasn’t as easy as the sleep sphere, where all she
had to do was let her conduit suck her back to the terra firma. She’d done this before. Two whole times.

  She needed to be calm, not impulsive. She wasn’t a full alucinator—she wasn’t even really a phase two disciple. She couldn’t help anyone if she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t geoscan and find the others if she couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything but feel stupid. Weak.

  Coming here was a mistake. Zeke would be disappointed. Did he realize what she’d done? Tentatively, she allowed her consciousness to reach for him. She’d just check and see if his mission was going smoothly.

  To her surprise, he was calling her too, but he passed over her as if she weren’t there.

  He wasn’t supposed to acknowledge her presence. Adi had insisted on it—to keep Karen focused. For him to seek Maggie probably meant there was trouble.

  More reason to get her butt out of the sphere.

  Maggie tried to wake herself up and found the path barricaded. An impenetrable wall sealed her conduit and every spot she attempted to create a new one.

  What the hell? What was it—a vigil-block? But why?

  She bolstered her shield and forged through the inky soup of wraiths toward the place she’d pinpointed Zeke’s signature. It didn’t take long to find him. She wedged herself and her lame little shield close to others so she could see what was going on through the wraiths that gathered around her.

  Nobody answered her hail, of course. Nobody noticed her at all. Two team members had disappeared—Constance and Roberts—and she didn’t detect their sigs. Lill, Blake and Adi focused on Zeke and Karen, in the center of the triangle of shields. Karen, cowering at Zeke’s feet, cried and leaned against his leg. Zeke argued with Adi, something about forcing Karen to cooperate.

  Like last night, Maggie managed to hear the others, just in time for Adi to promise Zeke she wouldn’t hurt him.

  All of a sudden, everyone was yelling at Adi about vigil-blocking the barrier. Zeke crumpled to the ground beside Karen. His nose bled, and Lill cursed at Adi, something Maggie had never heard anyone do.