Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2

by Jody Wallace

  “The problem isn’t your mental state. It’s your physical one,” Moody said. “Do you have a death wish?”

  Zeke had to give it to him—the old curator had balls of steel. Zeke may have taken out a T-Rex, but the young curator exuded menace. Something about him spoke of darkness and death. He was exactly how Zeke expected a curator to be, as opposed to the old man. The eldest curator’s insouciance was a direct contrast to his comrade’s seriousness and pinched silence.

  Moody’s attitude made Zeke seem like Pollyanna, and Zeke hadn’t thought he’d ever meet anyone crabbier than he was—or used to be. He hadn’t felt nearly as crabby since he’d learned he and Maggie could stay together as she finished her hand to hand training and academic studies.

  Ignoring the thundercloud glaring at his heart monitor, the old curator lowered the foot of the bed, then raised it, then lowered it again. Zeke kind of wanted to smash the controls with a hammer. From the expression on the young curator’s face, he’d give Zeke the hammer and a pat on the back to boot.

  The younger guy was hard to read, and Zeke appreciated the tiny moment of transparency. Made him seem less sinister. After a double dose of Karen Kingsbury, Zeke had had enough sinister to last a lifetime.

  He just wanted to lose himself in the woman he loved and forget everything that had happened the past several days.

  Except the sex part. That had happened, and Zeke was getting pretty desperate for it to happen again. His broken leg would make things less athletic than he preferred, but he could manage.

  “That’s better.” The old curator quit fiddling with the bed and clasped his bony hands in his lap. “And no, I don’t have a death wish. The rest of you worry too much, because I’m healthier than you think. I wonder what’s for lunch?”

  Zeke didn’t think the old guy should be boasting, considering his shortcomings had caused a damn lot of trouble down below. Had he been as fit as the second curator, who seemed to be about Zeke’s age, maybe Zeke wouldn’t be stuck in a hospital bed too, nursing a broken leg.

  In the same room as the pestery old man, because the other rooms were overflowing with injured employees.

  Goddamn. He hadn’t had a moment’s privacy with Maggie, to tell her he thought they should get married or something. Not to mention have sex. Now that Maggie wasn’t formally Zeke’s disciple, being lovers wasn’t an issue. They could start a family if they wanted. He wasn’t sure about kids, but he was sure about Maggie.

  He’d been sure about Maggie for a long time, and he’d nearly lost her. He wasn’t taking any more chances.

  “Gruel for lunch for you,” the curator said to his elderly companion. He glanced over the binder at the end of the bed. “Your cholesterol is off the charts.”

  “Don’t be a nag, Moody. The steak was delicious.”

  “Listen to him, Moody.” Lill, leaning against the doorjamb, grinned at Zeke when he noticed her arrival. Maggie accompanied her, balancing a tray of food. “Don’t be a nag.”

  “Ms. Carmichael.” The tall curator inclined his head. “Lovely to see you.”

  No one believed him. Lill had been at him to tell her what was going to happen to Adi every time she’d run him to ground. Considering the guy seemed to have the ability to disappear into thin air, it was a testament to Lill’s persistence that she continued to find him.

  Maggie navigated around Lill with a smile and set lunch on Zeke’s bedside table, followed by the old curator’s. A bandage wrapped her wrist and scrapes marred her pretty face, but to Zeke she looked like an angel with a cheeseburger. She returned to his side, perched on his bed, and took his hand.

  “Any word from my friend Adi? Adishakti Sharma?” Lill asked. “Ring any bells?”

  “Ms. Carmichael, as you’re aware, you don’t have the clearance for those answers.” The younger curator strode across the room, clearly intent on leaving.

  Lill remained in the doorway, forcing the man to confront her. “Maybe I should get clearance.”

  “That isn’t likely to happen.” He stood several inches taller than Zeke’s statuesque friend, and Lill was a tall woman. “I believe you’ve told me on three occasions you’d rather tear out your own hair than try for vigil.”

  “I’d look good bald.” Lill’s eyes flashed dangerously, like they did during a code one. “And if I didn’t? Hair grows back. But my friend hasn’t come back, and I want to know that she’s okay.”

  “Young lady,” the bedridden curator interjected. Zeke couldn’t help but notice the old fox wasn’t smiling anymore, and he always smiled at mealtimes. Especially when he’d been smuggled a cheeseburger instead of gruel. “While I appreciate your role in saving my life, I’d advise you to let this topic go.”

  Maggie clutched Zeke’s hand tighter. The confrontations between Lill and the younger curator made everyone uncomfortable. Zeke suspected that was why the curator avoided Lill.

  Though he didn’t look uncomfortable. He looked annoyed.

  “I’ll let it go when you let me talk to Adi.” Lill pretended to check her nails, but from his angle, Zeke could see her eyeing both curators through her lashes.

  “Your alliance with Ms. Sharma does you no credit, considering her transgressions.” The tall curator looked ready to seize Lill by the shoulders and set her aside, like a child. Be damned if Zeke didn’t get the impression he could manage it. What the fuck was Lill doing? “Would you like to be suspended as well, Ms. Carmichael?”

  Lill’s nostrils flared. “I’m good at what I do.”

  “As was Ms. Sharma. Talent isn’t the issue.”

  “I recognize empty threats when I hear them.” Lill chuckled without humor. “You can’t afford to suspend me after we’ve had such heavy losses. Everyone knows L1s and L2s have been popping up like bunnies, but we’re not seeing a corresponding rise in L4s and L5s. We’ve all got double shifts, triple students. Sentries are on the front lines of neonati scanning and identification, and I’m one of only two confounders assigned to my area. And that is why you won’t suspend me.”

  The man considered Lill as if he’d never seen her before—or as if he’d finally recognized her as more than a nuisance. “Seven curators. Seven divisions with seven vigils each. Seven sentries in each area. Why do you think we’re structured so that each level of our organization has seven equally weighted principals?”

  “So no one is overburdened,” Lill said immediately.

  “So we have redundancy should we be short a sentry. Or two sentries. Or a curator.” Moody glowered at them all, and the old curator said nothing. No jokes about food or blinged out ankle bracelets. “All of you can be replaced.”

  “And you?” Lill asked, crossing her arms.

  “I can be replaced,” the man said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment.” This time he brushed past Lill, and their shoulders collided. She watched him go with murder in her gaze.

  “Maybe you should be replaced, asshole,” Zeke heard her mutter before took off after him.

  Maggie and Zeke exchanged a long glance after Lill disappeared. He needed to convince Lillian to take the guy’s threat of suspension seriously. She was already on probation, and like she’d said, all areas were short on staff and long on students. They needed Lillian.

  The old curator cleared his throat. “Your friend is not being wise.”

  “She rarely is,” Zeke said. “But she is good at what she does.”

  “She shouldn’t toy with him.” The curator fumbled for the water Maggie had brought him, looking exactly like the weak, old man he was. “Tell her.”

  “I don’t know that she’ll listen.” Maggie unwrapped Zeke’s meal. “Losing Constance and Adi has hit Lill hard. She’s angry, and she wants someone to blame.”

  “There’s nobody to blame but Karen, and she’s dead.” Reluctant to let his food get cold, Zeke started on his lunch and was halfway th
rough it when the curator’s nurse appeared.

  “It’s time for the meeting, sir.” Two orderlies accompanied the friendly nurse, one pushing a wheelchair.

  “Already? And me without a thing to wear.” The curator stuffed his illicit hamburger into a bag, but not before the nurse saw it and frowned.

  The six remaining North American vigils had arrived to discuss the future with the two curators. Perhaps that was where the younger curator had absconded to instead of inventing an appointment to avoid Lill. Rumors abounded that Adi’s second in command, Blake, would be elevated to vigil in her place. Zeke and Lill’s fellow East Coast sentry Rhys was also being considered, which would make the big man ecstatic. Promoting a new vigil was somewhat like an American president selecting his cabinet.

  Zeke’s and Lill’s names had definitely not been on anyone’s short lists. Thank God. Granted, he could see Maggie going that route someday. She was smart, brave and talented enough, and now that she’d weathered the worst wraith outbreak in modern history and been personally matriculated by a curator, she’d gained confidence both in the sphere and out of it.

  He was proud of her. So damn proud. After everything that had happened, he was also so damn grateful she wanted to be with him. She could study at the Orbis. She could be assigned anywhere. But she’d asked to complete the rest of her studies at the East Coast base with Zeke, and the vigils had agreed.

  The nurse and orderlies helped the curator into the wheelchair, rolling his IV pole and portable monitor out from behind the bed. The curator, holding his hospital gown close to his knobby knees, caught Zeke’s eye and waggled his brows. “Think you can get along without me for a couple of hours, roomie?”

  “I’ll try not to break any more of my legs,” Zeke said, “if you try not to have a heart attack.”

  The burly nurse appeared taken aback by Zeke’s banter, but he was new here, shipped in to fill in the staffing gaps after the incident. He hadn’t gotten to know this particular curator the way Zeke and Maggie had.

  “Sit tight, sir,” he advised the curator with a lot more respect than Zeke had shown. “There’s a bump at the threshold.”

  Then the curator, the nurse and the orderlies were gone, leaving Zeke and Maggie alone for the first time in days.

  Maggie smiled at him. “Good burger?”

  “Lock the door,” Zeke told her. “We need to talk.”

  Maggie did as asked but glanced pointedly at the camera in the corner of the room—all the patient rooms had cameras. Conversations or activities that needed to remain private took place on paper, outside the facility, or in dreamspace.

  “What do you want to talk about?” Maggie didn’t look worried, but she didn’t realize what Zeke had in mind, either. Well, she’d been working her ass off helping reassemble the coma station. She hadn’t been trapped in bed with a broken leg and nothing to do but talk to the old man, watch DVDs, and fantasize about sex.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said. “I need to do something first.”

  He wondered, sometimes, after what they’d learned about Karen, just how private dreamspace was. Their curator had removed the knowledge of camouflage piercing from Zeke, Maggie and Lill’s memories days ago, repeating his desire for secrecy. Since technically he could have removed their memories that the camouflage existed, Zeke figured the old man wanted to keep a shared secret between them like a bond.

  Or an obligation.

  Right now, Zeke didn’t care about obligations, or secrets, or camouflage. Right now he intended to take advantage of his alone time with Maggie.

  And he didn’t want any damn desk jockey in the coma station’s IT department getting an eyeful of what was about to happen in this room.

  Zeke flipped a table knife from lunch through his fingers, testing its weight. Then he sent it spinning straight at the camera.

  It struck dead on and shattered the small device. Zeke raised an eyebrow at Maggie. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to talk about private stuff.”

  Maggie frowned. “You’re going to get in trouble for that.”

  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her across his lap. His leg only twinged a little. “I’d get in more trouble if I let them film us doing this.”

  By the time he raised his head after the best kiss he’d ever experienced while trapped in a hospital bed, Maggie understood completely what he meant by private stuff. And what he meant by talking.

  An hour after that, she understood that he loved her, because he told her a blue million times; that a leg in a cast couldn’t bend that way, which he only had to tell her once; and that she could make him cry like a baby when she revealed that she did indeed have condoms in her pocket.

  She loved him. He loved her. What they had was tangible in every way possible. He swore to her, in the aftermath of their lovemaking, that he’d never fail her again. He swore to her that he’d only be half as grumpy from here on out.

  And Maggie? She swore to him she’d start taking hand to hand combat training seriously. A lot more seriously. To prove it, she showed him the knife she’d hidden inside her shoe.

  He’d never been happier in his life.

  About the Author

  Jody Wallace is published in romance fiction under the names Jody Wallace and Ellie Marvel. She has always lived with cats, and they have always been mean.

  To learn more about Ms. Wallace, please visit www.jodywallace.com or the cat’s website, www.meankitty.com. You can also send an email to jwallace@meankitty.com.

  Look for these titles by Jody Wallace

  Now Available:

  A Spell for Susannah

  Liam’s Gold

  What She Deserves (by Ellie Marvel)

  Claustrophobic Christmas (by Ellie Marvel)

  The Dreamwalker

  Tangible

  Disciple

  The Realm

  Survival of the Fairest

  One Thousand Kisses

  Dreams don’t come true, but nightmares do.

  Tangible

  © 2013 Jody Wallace

  The DreamWalkers, Book 1

  When Zeke Garrett is reactivated to mentor the next dreamer that pops up on the Somnium’s radar, he’s sure it’s a mistake. The covert organization is still struggling to conceal the fallout from his last assignment, a fatal catastrophe.

  From the first blast of her pepper spray, he realizes this neonati, whose nightmares manifest vampires straight from the pages of pop-culture, is more than he bargained for—a potential dreamwalker. But before her training can begin, he has to convince the stubborn, mouthy woman she’s not dreaming.

  Maggie Mackey hasn’t slept well in a month, but that doesn’t explain how the monsters from her nightmares suddenly seem so real. Or why, when a team of intimidating, sword-wielding toughs rescue her, their leader captures her mouth in a swift, knee-weakening kiss.

  Once he tears himself away, Zeke’s mental forehead smacking begins. Their embrace has confirmed they have a rare tangible bond, a phenomenon which fooled him once before. Somehow he must tutor the woman of his dreams without getting attached. Otherwise her nightmares could become his own.

  Warning: Contains lots of cussing, pop-culture references and monsters with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Tangible:

  Zeke hated it when the dreamers were Joss Whedon fans. Based on the pixel-perfect accuracy of the vampires she’d conjured—vamps who were now attempting to eat her—this dreamer had memorized every incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the show transcripts to the books to the comics.

  Cursing, he flung his knife at an oncoming vamp and whirled to stake a second. The ugly mother snarled its way up the spike before exploding into a million particles of dust. How the hell many were there? The density of the pack wasn’t a good sign.

  In fact, it was
very, very bad. Especially for him.

  The neo they were here to collar huddled in the alley behind him, brandishing a gigantic pocketbook like a flail. Blood from a small wound at her throat trickled down her skin and stained the collar of her coat. He had to hand it to her. She had moxie. And a seriously overactive imagination that had to be harnessed before it got her and everyone else killed.

  Well, at least she’d stopped screaming.

  “Zeke, five o’clock!” Rhys called. The vamp with the knife sticking out of its shoulder barreled into him, knocked him down and attempted to sink jagged teeth into his neck. His vest and coat protected his torso but not his throat. He grabbed the monster’s head. Yellow goat-like eyes gleamed in the shadows of the buildings that lined the alley.

  The rest of the field team was a minute away. His arms trembled with strain and his vision tunneled as he concentrated on keeping himself whole. As many vamps as they’d had the past ten years, they should add gorgets to their field gear.

  Not that they could afford it, but it was a nice fantasy.

  “Shut your eyes,” commanded a female voice. The dreamer. His dreamer.

  “Stay out of this!”

  She didn’t. A hand clutching pepper spray appeared between him and his attacker. Desperately, Zeke shoved away the vamp right before a noxious blast hosed its wrinkly mug.

  With a howl, the monster convulsed, clawing its head. Zeke rolled the other way fast. Fire bloomed all over his face anyway.

  “Excuse me, ma’am!” Rhys thundered up, huge feet kicking snow and gravel every direction, and pounced on the vamp. Zeke heard growls, curses. Over the sound of his own hacking, he detected the telltale whoomp of a monster getting dusted.

  The dreamer, her voice anxious, blurted out, “Are you okay, sir?”

  No thanks to you. Zeke blinked, coughed and scooped up snow to hold against his face. The icy wetness relieved the burn somewhat. Thank God he’d missed most of the spray or he’d be out of commission. He dabbed his eyes on his jacket sleeve, careful not to smear the residue. With blurred vision, he glanced up to see his target extend her hand to him.