Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2

by Jody Wallace

  After a long hesitation he accepted, though she’d been more than enough help already. Right before their skin touched, his palm warmed. A whisper of sensation, a magnetic pull, shivered up his arm.

  He bit back a curse. A tangible bond—and he’d only been in her head once.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to get saddled with an L2 at most. Screw Sean and his statistics.

  The woman tensed, perhaps feeling the faint zing, perhaps sensing his hostility. She hauled him to his feet anyway. The process was complicated by the fact his lungs burned, the ground was slick and he couldn’t see straight. Once he was upright, she sidled away, rubbing her hand on her pants.

  He copied her gesture, trying to wipe away the sensation of her cold, slender fingers and the potency of their connection. For high-level alucinators, walking someone else’s dreams occasionally forged a spontaneous link that could mean a number of things.

  Most were undesirable. None could be addressed in an icy, dark alley with corporeal wraiths on the loose.

  “Who were those guys?” Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and she clutched the pepper spray in a defensive position. “They looked like... I’m not crazy, but they looked like vampires. How did you make the bodies disappear?”

  He was thankful she didn’t carry a gun. A lot of new dreamers did, their unsettling nightmares driving them to protect themselves from horrors they couldn’t yet name.

  Since Zeke was still coughing, Rhys answered for him. “Ma’am, we’ll explain everything as soon as we can, but first we have to take care of stragglers.” And onlookers or witnesses, but so far nobody had come to check out the screams.

  “Is this a setup?” The woman confronted them, angry and scared. “Reality TV? I signed no contract, gentlemen, and you will be hearing from my lawyer.”

  “Do you see any cameras?” Zeke managed, his breathing normalizing. The deserted alley where she’d been attacked was a long, narrow lane separating rows of historic buildings with tiny back yards. Snow coated most exposed surfaces in a pale gleam of winter.

  “You could have concealed them.”

  Open concrete carports and trash cans bordered the track, providing lots of places for cameramen...or wraiths. Though lurking wasn’t really the monsters’ style.

  “It’s not a setup, ma’am,” Rhys assured her. He clapped Zeke on the back. “Will you live?”

  “Yeah. Just caught a whiff.” He flicked on his walkie-talkie, stifling another cough. The device crackled, static-riddled. He smacked it until it worked. What he wouldn’t give for earbuds. “Secure the area. We’ve got the neo. Have Lillian confound any witnesses.”

  Though he couldn’t see them from his position, his other teammates would fan out, casing the intersecting streets for more wraiths. The creatures were attracted to the dreamers who’d produced them, but that never stopped them from assaulting passersby. When everyone reported the area complication-free, Zeke coughed one last time and turned to the reason for his current suffering.

  Enough light filtered in that he could distinguish the woman’s features and form. Not a kid, thank God. Past her twenties—the most common age for neonati. The cut on her throat looked like a failed bite. It would sting but wasn’t dangerous. Caucasian, US citizen from the accent, with long disheveled hair, dark eyes with circles under them, and a round, cold-reddened face. Five-foot-five or six. She boasted what seemed to be generous curves under her heavy coat and fuzzy pants.

  She was on the pretty side of ordinary, with intelligence in her sharp gaze and alertness in her body language.

  The problem was she wasn’t even slightly ordinary. She was an alucinator. A person whose mind could access the dreamsphere and drag monsters into the terra firma. Untrained and powerful, she was more dangerous than his whole team combined.

  How strong was she? Her initial manifestation and their tangible suggested L4. Not L5—since L5s were extremely rare—but his comfort level extended only to L3, no matter what the vigils and Lillian had insisted.

  Someone on his team was going to have to take this dreamer off his hands. He’d mentor the next one.

  “Who are you talking to on your radio, your cameramen?” She gestured at the walkie. “Can you prove this isn’t a setup?”

  Zeke clipped the walkie to his belt. The old-timers in the organization claimed the first-meet between dreamer and field team had been easier before Candid Camera. Reality television had increased humanity’s disbelief threshold tenfold.

  “Vamps turning into dust before your eyes not convincing enough for you?” he asked her.

  Predictably, it was not. “Special effects. Projection cameras. How many more fake vampires are there?”

  As if they could afford special effects and high tech cameras. “They’re not fake and we don’t know yet.”

  “A likely story.” Her words were firm but her big eyes and pale face spoke of a woman who was completely shaken up.

  Most dreamers manifested between one and four wraiths at first. Not fifteen. The only way she was getting through this alive was if she cooperated with everything he and his team required.

  Hell. He’d never been good at the touchy-feely aspects of training, but when he’d reported the neonati last night—after he’d geotracked her odd composite signature in the dreamsphere—HQ had reiterated that his administrative leave from mentoring was over. They wanted him to take this one and his whole team knew it.

  As he watched the woman assess him and, from her expression, find him wanting, inspiration struck him like an invisible wraith. If he could make her hate him so much she refused to associate with him, it would force someone else to step in.

  Not a bad plan.

  Passion burns. Betrayal scars.

  Talent to Burn

  © 2014 Laura Welling

  Cat Wilson grew up a misfit among misfits. She couldn’t read minds, see the future, or start fires like the other Talented kids inside the shadowy Grey Institute. Finally she ran, leaving her beloved brother, Eric, behind. She’s been running ever since.

  When she learns that Eric has escaped, leaving deadly fires in his wake, Cat is torn between fear for her brother, and unwanted attraction to the messenger, a charming, Talented ex-con who lives for the next adrenaline rush.

  Jamie Murphy is sure his group of outcast Talents can help Eric—if they can get to him before the cops or the Institute, and before he kills again. Cat’s aversion to Talented bad boys is like a wall of ice, but to his surprise, he doesn’t have to use an ounce of his own unique gift to find a way through it.

  Yet locating Eric is only the beginning. In the battle to pull him back from the brink, Cat must find the courage to unlock a fearsome Talent of her own. And pray the psychic backdraft doesn’t destroy everyone she loves.

  Warning: Contents are hot. If you smell smoke, keep reading and ignore those pesky smoke alarms on the ceiling. Okay, just kidding! But oven mitts might come in handy.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Talent to Burn:

  When I walked out of Reilly’s bar shortly after midnight, every vestige of psychic Talent I possessed stood up and shivered.

  I stopped on the doorstep in the frigid Washington night, turning my head, listening, trying to work out what had triggered the feeling. Reilly’s had one lamppost in the parking lot, an island of light on the concrete. The only other illumination came from the neon beer signs in the window beside me, beacons against the dark.

  I’d been working at the bar for nine months now, and the late-night noises had ceased giving me the creeps long ago. I knew the scurry of rats in the Dumpster and the hum of the lamp. This was something else, one of the echoes of Talent that sometimes broke through. Unlike other members of my family, I had no real Talent. Only shadows.

  Nothing unusual jumped out at me. My rational brain took the bad feeling—hunch, whatever you want to c
all it—and shoved it in a corner. My heart slowed again. I shuddered, pulling my coat closer around my body. Years ago, I’d grown tired of starting at every little thing, despite my upbringing. Time to go home.

  I trudged over to my hunk o’ junk car and climbed in. The key turned and the engine coughed and struggled.

  My father would have parked closer to the door, checked both directions before crossing the ten feet in between, looked under the car for suspicious packages, and driven away white-faced, pretending everything was normal. Screw that. There were plenty of rational things to be afraid of, like being stuck working in a dive bar for the rest of my life. I had bigger plans.

  The car started at last, and I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.

  A few minutes later, I jogged up the stairs to my apartment. The stairwell stank of tomcat and mold, but the place itself wasn’t bad, although kind of cold at this time of year. Winter would be over soon enough.

  I pulled out my key and as I touched it to the lock, the door drifted open. The apartment lay dark in front of me, and I swore under my breath. My last place had been broken into, and I’d lost everything of value. At least there would be less for them to take this time.

  I stood still and quiet, waiting, but the apartment lay silent. I detected no trace of an aura within.

  I couldn’t stand out here all night, and it wasn’t like I could call the police. Quietly, I slid my arm around the doorframe and flipped on the light.

  The living area resembled the aftermath of a hurricane, at least a category three. Complete disaster area. Everything I owned lay on the floor, and all of it broken. Among smashed plates and glasses were chunks of foam rubber from my couch, which had been knifed. Everything from the fridge had been poured out, my cookbooks torn up, DVDs smashed.

  I repeated my cautious approach to the bedroom, although my instincts told me whoever did this was long gone.

  The mattress had suffered the same treatment as the couch. Ripped from the closet, my clothes lay in a pile of slashed rags at the foot of the bed. Even the cheerful red and white snowflake curtains I’d sewn myself had been torn down. The window had been thrown open and an icy draft stirred the ruins of my possessions.

  I slid down the wall and rested my head on my arms, let things get the better of me. I knew I’d stand up again in a minute and start cleaning, but I needed to breathe first, to get my head back in a positive place. No crying allowed, because if I started it would be hard to stop.

  “Those bastards made a real mess,” a voice said, and I leaped to my feet, stumbling, reaching for a weapon I didn’t own anymore.

  A huge man in a leather jacket stood in the doorway of my apartment. The aura of his Talent surrounded him, a dark gray blur of pure power around his edges. He stepped toward me.

  “Get out!” I heard the note of hysteria in my own voice from far away, like a long distance call on a bad line. I turned to run, to escape, but my legs gave out and I tripped over something in the mess and fell flat out on the floor. I began to crawl away as fast as I could manage, panting to drag air into my lungs.

  The man’s legs moved into my field of vision, and he crouched down in front of me, blocking my path. “Are you all right?”

  “Get away from me!” I sat up and shoved myself back into a crouch, ready to run. The fear dropped from a roar to the hum of blood rushing through my ears. Get it together, Cat. Remember your training.

  He spread his hands in front of him, whether to show me he didn’t have a weapon or to calm me as if I were a skittish horse, I didn’t know. “I’m here to help you, if you’ll hear me out.”

  “What did I do to you?” I tensed my muscles, ready to fight. “Why did you do this?”

  “I didn’t.” He must have seen the disbelief in my eyes, because he reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, steadying.

  Although I wanted to smash his hand away, I didn’t flinch.

  “I wouldn’t do this—partly because I have no reason to, and partly because I’m not that much of an ass. This was done by Grey Institute men.”

  A cold feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t heard that name since my father had passed away when I was seventeen. I rose to my feet, slowly, warily, and the man did the same.

  “Are you one of them?” My voice came out raw and scratchy. Perhaps it was a naïve question, but I wanted to gauge his reaction when I asked.

  “No.” His eyes turned dark, the pupils huge. “I swear to you, on my mother’s grave. I have nothing to do with those sons of bitches. You couldn’t pay me enough.” His voice held steady and strong. He held out his hand. “I’m Jamie Murphy. I already know you’re Catrina Wilson.”

  I ignored his hand, watching his face and his aura instead. “What do you want with me?”

  He lowered his hand to his side. “The Greys are looking for your brother. I want to find him before they do.”

  Eric. I hadn’t even thought his name in years.

  I considered, watching Jamie, adding up the evidence. He knew the Greys existed, which could mean he was one of them, or he worked for one of the few top-secret government agencies who knew of their existence, or he’d tangled with them like I had. He didn’t look regimented enough to be one of them, or boring enough to be a government employee. The hatred in his voice had been heartfelt. His aura churned around him, his control slipping. I saw no traces of deceit in it.

  Through the open window came the sound of a car door closing quietly. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and my gaze connected with Jamie’s.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said, not whispering, but hushed. “They might be coming back for you. This stinks of trap.”

  I walked to the window. My apartment faced the street. Several identical black vans had appeared, parked in a line along the curb on the opposite side of the street. No one in sight. I had a profoundly bad feeling about this.

  “Come with me?”

  I looked back at Jamie. “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere we can talk.”

  Not a good choice, to trust a complete stranger. He looked like a clichéd bad boy— dark hair falling in his eyes, unshaven jaw, leather jacket. I’d bet he had a raft of bad Celtic knot tattoos. But he had a remarkably clear aura. Something about it felt right to me, and if I’d learned anything in all these years, I’d learned to trust my gut. I made an instant decision. “All right. We can talk. I’m not promising anything else. I need to get out of here, anyway.”

  Jamie led the way out to the stairwell. Suddenly, he stopped, turned and lifted a finger to his lips. In the darkness, several people’s footsteps echoed up the stairs. They were running.

  My heart kicked back into overdrive, the adrenaline rushing through my system once again. I beckoned to Jamie and then made my way down the dark hallway, past the neighboring apartment, to the window that opened onto the fire exit.

  He took one look at the window and grimaced. Setting his hands, he forced the window open, making the old sash screech against the frame. Footsteps pounded behind us and he said, “Go, go,” as I pushed myself through the window and hit the fire exit running.

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

  Cincinnati OH 45249

  Disciple

  Copyright © 2014 by Jody Wallace

  ISBN: 978-1-61922-446-9

  Edited by Holly Atkinson

 
Cover by Kanaxa

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2014

  www.samhainpublishing.com