Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2

by Jody Wallace

  Except the odor—that was nothing from this green Earth.

  “Perhaps a sledgehammer?” Adi yawned hugely behind her hand. “Although this one appears to have been ripped.”

  Maggie remembered how easy it had been to drive her hands and feet into the wraith bodies in the sphere—how gratifying it had been. The shredding and rending had been a revenge of sorts, and their bodies had offered no more resistance than a tub of rice pudding. She’d torn them to pieces.

  Apparently, she packed quite the punch.

  Surreptitiously, she glanced at her hands. Aside from the scalp injury she’d gotten fighting the zombies and the cut from yesterday, she had no bruising or signs of her killing spree. She flexed and only felt achy.

  Adi yawned again. “Gracious. Another one and my face might split open.”

  “You need to go to bed,” Lillian told the vigil sternly.

  “Not yet. It was a brief vigil-block. I merely require a stimulant.” Her cellphone buzzed, and she lifted it to her ear. “Sharma. What? Here? I’ll be right there.”

  She hung up, closed her eyes, and pressed her index fingers to her temples as if centering herself. “I do not have time for this.”

  “What’s wrong? More wraiths?” Lill asked her.

  “Worse. I have to go.” Though visibly depleted, Adi tottered out of the room, hailing soldiers as she fled.

  “What could be worse than more wraiths?” Maggie wondered aloud. “More corpses? More dead coma patients?”

  “If it was important, she would have told us.” Lill flipped a monster onto its back. Ribs stuck out of its chest like broken corn stalks. She squatted beside the head and peeled back withered lips to inspect the fangs. “I don’t know what in the flying blue hell is going on here. Only thing I can figure is these ugly mothers aren’t entirely dead.”

  “Maybe you should get your fingers out of the bitey part, then,” Zeke suggested.

  Maggie backed to the half-open door and glanced into the hallway. No one else was coming.

  “This might be a good time to tell Lill,” she said in a low voice.

  Lill stood, wiped her fingers on her dirty pants, and gave the vampire a kick. “Tell me what, that you two idiots slept together?”

  “Can’t tell you that,” Zeke said. “Because we didn’t.”

  Lill crossed her arms. “Bullshit.”

  Zeke threw up his hands. “Come on, Lill. I know what’s at stake. I can keep it in my pants if I have to. Maggie’s my student, so I have to.”

  Maggie opened her mouth. She wasn’t sure if she was going to agree or disagree with Zeke, but the expression of utter disgust on his face stopped her.

  Perhaps he was disappointed in himself for not waiting until she matriculated, until it was permitted. Or was it more than that?

  Nothing about their lovemaking disgusted her. She understood why it had been a bad idea, but it didn’t erase the fact she was in love with Zeke. So very much in love with him.

  His disgust—it hurt.

  “I was going to say we should tell her what I did and ask about the scroll.” Maggie coughed to hide the pain in her voice. “Maybe she’s heard about it.”

  “What did you do besides trance in when you weren’t supposed to?” Zeke asked. “Come to think of it, if you were in the sphere, why couldn’t anyone sense you? I should have been able to through the tangible, at the very least.”

  “Didn’t we cover this the last time we were in the sphere together? When you woke Karen?”

  “You weren’t in the sphere when we woke Karen,” Zeke said. “You were—” He frowned. “Keeping watch or something.”

  Lill gaped at him. “Did a wraith eat your brain? Adi insisted Maggie trance in with you yesterday to keep you grounded. Maggie lost her grip and caused the first code one too.”

  “Except I didn’t,” Maggie said.

  Zeke closed his eyes and shook his head rapidly. “Right, right. She had to have been there. I’m not thinking straight.”

  Was he faking memory loss to send Maggie a message that he didn’t trust Lill enough to confide in her? Lill believed Maggie was responsible for the code ones, and the code ones had resulted in ten deaths already, including Lill’s former student Constance.

  “Even though Karen was in the sphere both times we had code ones,” she said to Lill, testing the water, “you think I’m responsible?”

  “I’m not saying I think Karen’s turned over a new leaf, but she’s a mess,” Lill said. “She’s too weak to pull a manifestation this size. It takes massive capacity, and all she can do is sit around and blubber.”

  “Leave Karen out of this,” Zeke said. “You’d cry too if you’d been trapped in that hell for a year.”

  Both Lill and Maggie stared at Zeke as if he’d grown an extra head.

  “What?” he said defensively. “I’m agreeing with Lill. Karen doesn’t have all that much left in the brain box.” He tapped his skull. “I doubt she’s still L5. Your abilities degrade if you get hurt bad enough. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t matriculate her. She could be as low as L2 now, and an L2 conduit only transmits, what, a wraith or two every couple minutes? Not a horde.”

  “What about Adi?” Maggie asked them. “You were pissed at her for vigil-blocking everyone. Then she hurt you, Zeke. I saw your nose bleed.”

  It was Zeke’s turn to look at her like she’d grown a head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Lill, tell him.” Perhaps he’d been in too much pain to apprehend that Adi had attacked him. Maggie turned to the other woman. “You threatened Adi.”

  “Why would I do that?” Lill asked, bemused. “Adi had us on lockdown. We were afraid Karen couldn’t control her conduit. It was a safety measure, and it didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “It didn’t sound like it was part of the plan to me.” She hadn’t imagined their shock and outrage. Adi had placed the vigil-block without it being agreed on. Why didn’t Lill remember what had happened to Zeke?

  “Since you weren’t actually part of the plan, you wouldn’t know all the details,” Zeke snapped.

  “Right. I missed the part of the plan where Adi was going to give you a nosebleed,” she snapped right back at him.

  “What is wrong with you?” Zeke asked. “That never happened.”

  Though she felt like a mulish toddler, Maggie objected. “It did too.”

  Lill studied her with a concerned frown. “Are you feeling all right, Maggie?”

  “It’s obvious she’s not.” Zeke rounded on her. “I can’t believe you tranced in and endangered yourself like that. You knew you caused the code one yesterday. You knew you might drop your shield and manifest again if you entered the trance sphere. But you did anyway. You almost got everyone killed, and now we’ve lost six more good people.”

  “I didn’t cause either code one,” she protested, taken aback by his vehemence. She’d discussed this at length with Zeke—in bed, no less. Was he criticizing her for Lill’s benefit or did he mean it? How could he be angry about something he knew she hadn’t done? “I saw Adi hurt you mentally. You collapsed. Lill cussed her out.”

  “Hon, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but Zeke didn’t get hurt and I’ve never cussed Adi in my life.” Lill inspected Maggie as if seeing her for the first time—and not appreciating her at all. “Cussed in front of her, but at her? Who would cuss at Adi?”

  “Adi told Zeke she wouldn’t hurt him right before Zeke collapsed. And then you—” Maggie tried to recall the exact words. “You said, ‘Zeke’s fucking bleeding’, and you asked her if she was doing it or if the terra firma was under attack.”

  But Lill was shaking her head slowly. “While it turns out the terra firma was under attack, that’s not anything close to what happened. We worked on matriculating Karen so we could learn how the healing works. She didn’t have time to o
pen herself to full assessment before we had to deal with the code one.”

  But Maggie had been there. She’d been right there, pressed against their shields. The first time she’d been unable to contact Zeke in the sphere, she’d located him. She’d heard him, watched him—watched them all. He’d confirmed the scene she’d described to him. Why was this time different?

  “Maybe you were seeing wraiths,” Lill suggested. “Because you care about Zeke, you’re terrified of him getting hurt and envisioned it. The bastards can really mindfuck you.”

  “I know how to control myself in the sphere enough that I don’t get visions.” What had she seen? She took Zeke’s arm and peered up into his stern face. Her finger brushed his bare wrist, and the whisper of tangible felt like a taunt. “Zeke, you truly don’t remember Adi hurting you or arguing with her about forcing Karen to cooperate?”

  “Karen was too tired to do much.” Zeke licked his lips. “I think…I mean, she’s not ready. We have to protect her from the Master. He wants the weak ones.”

  “Last I heard, you all thought the Master was lie. Did you meet him after I left?”

  Zeke blinked. “We exited when we found out we had a code one. That you caused. But the Master… Wait, if he was coming, we would have stuck around to see what the hell he was.”

  “Karen didn’t cooperate,” Lill said suddenly. She rubbed her eyes and then squeezed her forehead as if fighting a brain freeze. “She hung on Zeke like a coat on a rack.”

  “She tried to help, didn’t she?” Now Zeke looked less certain. “She explained something about shields and healing.”

  “We already knew about shields and their hypothetical connection to the hypothetical healing before we not so hypothetically tranced in,” Lill said. “Karen made no effort to fulfill her part of the agreement. She was useless. The Master was a no-show, despite her claim he was there.”

  “I don’t…” Zeke glanced down at Maggie, and his gaze softened. He put his hand over hers. “You understand why I’m pissed at you? You could have been killed, Mags.”

  A thrill shocked her skin at the point of contact. Maggie swallowed hard. “I was worried about you.”

  “Not now, you two,” Lill growled. “You dumb shits.”

  “Fuck off, Lill,” Zeke said offhandedly, and his thumb stroked Maggie’s hand. It didn’t make up for his anger, but until they could speak privately, it reassured her that the man who’d made love to her this morning was still inside Zeke’s post-warzone shell.

  “Zeke?” A soft, quivering voice came from the doorway.

  He stiffened and stepped away from Maggie. A scowl twisted his face. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “What are those things?” Karen, no longer dressed in a hospital gown but in gray standard issue sweats, toddled into the room, balancing herself against a wall. Her eyes grew huge in her thin, pallid face. “Oh no. Oh God. Those are real bodies. Oh God.”

  She swayed. Zeke ripped out an oath and darted forward to catch her before she hit the ground. Lill watched impassively.

  “This proves it,” Karen wailed. “He’s coming. He’s going to escape the dreamsphere and come after us.”

  “Who’s coming?” Zeke demanded.

  It was as if Karen’s wail had sapped the last of her strength. She went limp in Zeke’s grasp, and her next words were barely a whisper. “The Master.”

  Lill uttered a disgusted sound but stomped closer to so she could hear. “The one who was supposedly in the dreamspace but wasn’t?”

  “He was there. He must have hidden from you, but he can’t hide from me once he gets close enough. He never could. That’s how I met him.”

  “And you met him when?” Lill asked. “Valentine’s lonely heart mixer for psychos?”

  “Before.” Tears welled out of her eyes, down her cheeks. “He found me before the Somnium did.”

  Lill raised her eyebrows. “We’re blaming him for Harrisburg now?”

  Zeke adjusted his grip on the woman, hefting her into his arms like a baby. Her bony hand rose feebly to pat at his face.

  “It’s been his plan all along,” Karen whispered. “The first time he wasn’t strong enough, but now he’s got a new portal. He means to find a way into the terra firma and kill us all.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Zeke’s skin chilled like ice. While he might not trust everything Karen said, she obviously believed the Master was on his way to kill them.

  “That’s not what the corpses mean,” Maggie said, her gaze locking with his. “You don’t believe her, do you? Don’t you remember what we discussed?”

  Maggie’s head wound—had it scrambled her brains? When had they talked about the corpses, other than her telling everyone she had no idea why they’d appeared? Maggie stared at him with a worried frown.

  “If there’s something relevant you two aren’t sharing, now would be a good time,” Lill added.

  He’d mentored Maggie long enough to recognize the guilt that flashed across her face. She did know something. If she knew it, why didn’t he? The corpses had no precedent. Maggie was—she was important to him, yes, but she was a half-trained L5. Not even vigils at the manifestation tank could create physical corpses.

  Could the corpses mean some Master blaster lurked in the dreamsphere, attempting to break free? And would that mean Maggie wasn’t responsible for the code ones? Wraiths had been unusually attracted to Maggie the whole time, both inside and outside the sphere, which indicated the metaphysical aspects of it could be changing. Or it indicated something about Maggie was different.

  The more he contemplated it, the more he could swear Maggie was connected to the corpses somehow, and—

  “Zeke, you have to take the Master seriously.” Karen’s eyelids fluttered shut, and a down-soft breeze puffed over his exposed skin. His vision blurred. The customary tangible buzz from her hand on his face intensified.

  “What are you doing?” Lill demanded. She grabbed Karen’s hand and jerked it away from Zeke.

  Karen squealed with surprise. Lill froze, her mouth open in mid-accusation.

  Zeke didn’t need to be able to see clearly to defend his charge. He smashed his boot into Lill’s knee, forcing her to release Karen.

  “Asshole!” Lill lurched backward, out of the room and into the hallway.

  Maggie yelled at him. “She wasn’t hurting Karen. Why did you do that?”

  He blinked fast to clear his eyesight, but everything remained hazy, as if the edges of the world had melted. Was the corpse odor getting to him? He pushed into the hallway too, followed by Maggie, who slammed the door behind her.

  A little unsteady, he focused on Karen’s face—the hollows under her eyes, the almost translucent skin. Her eyelashes were a pale circle on her cheeks, and the sweatshirt couldn’t hide the way her collarbones jutted from her malnourished frame. She’d suffered so much. If this Master was responsible for all of it, controlling her, hurting her, was she crazy and murderous after all?

  Could he continue to hate her more than any other person in the world if it wasn’t her fault?

  “Don’t worry about me,” Lillian said in a snarl. She rubbed her knee, then her eyes. “You didn’t knock my kneecap out of joint or anything. I’m fine.”

  “I’m not worried about you.” If he’d wanted to break her kneecap, he would have. “I overreacted. Still tense from the code one.”

  Lill shook her head as if to clear it. “I thought I sensed Karen doing something.”

  “Like what?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m frightened, I’m tired, and I’ve been in a coma for a year. Zeke rescued me at last, and now we’re all going to die anyway.” Karen’s rant paused when a couple soldiers trooped past. Not that her thin, whispery voice could be heard outside a three-foot radius. “What could I possibly do, Lillian, when I couldn’t even matriculate? I hoped to te
ach everyone about the healing so you wouldn’t make me go back there.”

  “I know you did,” Lill said.

  “He’s going to come after me anyway,” Karen finished, sniffing back tears. “Those corpses must be an experiment. It’s the only thing that explains it. He’s that much closer to succeeding.”

  “Hold on,” Maggie interrupted. “A minute ago Lill said Karen didn’t cooperate. That all she did was cry and blubber. That’s consistent with what I observed too.”

  Zeke and Lill exchanged a glance. This was the third time Maggie had remembered things incorrectly. Gently, Zeke set Karen on her feet and turned his attention toward his other student. Lill, he noticed, sidled behind Maggie as if expecting her to bolt.

  Was Maggie sick? Had she been injured, causing hallucinations? He peered at her pupils, but they weren’t dilated or showing signs of concussion. Her only injury was under her hair somewhere, and a little blood trailed down her temple.

  “Maggie,” he began.

  Before he could finish, Adi’s voice crackled over the intercom and requested their immediate presence in the common room.

  They hastened up the corridor to the room where the group trance had taken place. Did this have anything to do with Adi’s mysterious phone call? More guards than necessary milled outside the door, one with a recent cut on his chin from the battle.

  The vigil waited inside with Blake and an elderly gentleman Zeke didn’t recognize. No manifestations. No corpses. Some old guy using a walker could hardly be worse than another code one.

  “Shut the door behind you,” Adi said as they filed in. She occupied a wingchair even though nearly everyone else stood, an indicator of how exhausted she was. Lines Zeke had never seen on her face before bracketed her lips.

  Behind him, several soldiers, breaking the level of discipline he’d come to associate with the coma station’s staff, attempted to peek into the room.