I have to tread lightly.
So, what you’re saying is you can’t be found saving a dream killer.
Precisely.
Awesome.
Bo dunked my wrist into the bucket.
“Ah-ow!” Needles of pain pricked their way up my arm as I danced in place.
“Quit being a baby.” He wrapped my wound. “You really weren’t lying when you came back.”
Seriously? “You thought I was?”
He raised his eyebrows and tipped his head to the side with a shrug. He stuck a finger under the bandage and tugged. “Too tight?”
I shook my head and took my hand back. “Well, I wasn’t.”
“I see that now. So, an octopus woman?”
“Squid.” I pointed to my wrist. “Teeth in their suckers.”
“And was I seeing things, or did she have some extra legs?”
I scratched my upper lip. “Legs?”
“Right. Fish parts, fins, ropy things.”
“Tentacles. I think the word you’re searching for is tentacles.”
“Yeah. Those.” He frowned and walked toward the bow. “It feels weird to be on a ship and having nothing to do.”
“Bo.”
He stopped and turned to me.
“When you travel by sea, always use Night’s Cruelty.”
He raised his chin and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”
“It has some kind of protection. The guardians can’t track you there.”
“Even using my Who?”
I nodded.
He took a few steps toward me. “She threatened you by using your Who against you.”
“Yeah. She did,” I grumbled.
He looked into one eye and then the other. “Can she really harm you?”
I held up my bound wrist. “Yeah. Be careful who you give your Who to.” I walked toward the rail.
Land.
“I don’t even know how to give it.”
“Good. Keep it that way. Wadji, where are—.” A low trumpet blare vibrated my chest. I drew in a deep breath. I knew right where we were. “Bring us onto shore somewhere quiet where no one can see us.”
Why would I do that?
“Because this is Basher Park. It’s thick with runners. This is going to be a bit more difficult than I’d originally hoped.”
Bo stepped up the rail next to me. “What is a runner? And do not tell me it is a person who runs.”
“Well. They do, but they run through all the dimensions of Dreamland at the same time, and at a rate of speed you can’t see. The friction they build melts away their skin. It’s pretty gross.”
He pulled his lips up and to the side, his brow furrowing in a thick frown. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“So how do we get past them?”
“With false Who’s.”
Getting false identities in Dreamland entailed snaring someone else’s Who so you could give it to the runner questioning you. I had one. Every traveler did. I didn’t know how I was going to get one for Bo. If only Mech and Rulak were somewhere else, anywhere else.
I think I can handle my own, thank you.
What? No. Wadji, you’re not coming with us. Too much could go wrong.
In this, you are mistaken. I am going. You will not win this argument.
Dreams crack it!
Wadji took us to shore just outside the park.
I reached through Place and teleported to the beach, bringing Bo with me.
Wadji’s hull scrunched in, morphing with his body. The blue fur faded away and became a long robe. His hair was still full and flowing, with a streak of blue. He paused, then shifted form again, loosing height and muscle mass. His shoulders and back stooped. His hair thinned, and his robes grew ragged and thin.
“You’re going for an elder?” I asked, feeling a bit unnerved with his likeness to something that had kept me on the run for so many years. “You’ll have to do something about your eyes.”
He concentrated on me, the darkness and the flashes of light fading behind thick cataracts. “Is this better?”
I wiggled my eyebrows and turned in the direction of the park. From here, all we could see was blue grass and rolling hills. “If anyone speaks to you, let me do the talking. Neither of you have credentials that won’t get us all killed.” I should be going alone.
“No, you shouldn’t.”
Bo glared at Wadji. “Could someone include me on the full conversation?”
I rolled my eyes and picked a direction. “He’s a mind reader.”
“Oddly,” Bo said, walking beside me, “I had gathered that on my own.”
Well, wasn’t he smart?
“River.” Wadji let out a long breath.
I was nervous. For several reasons. We were veering into almost certain trouble. I didn’t understand why Basher’s Park was so full of runners, but it was. What would the runners and the elders do with a person like me? Or Wadji?
I had bigger reasons to be uneasy. I’d abandoned Mech. For me, it had been a few weeks. If that. For him, it could have been a few days or a few years. I had no way of knowing.
Just weeks ago, I’d been a drifter, attached to no one. I hadn’t known what being a friend really meant. After meeting Bo and Zoe, though, everything changed. I realized what I’d been missing all those years traveling with the caravan. Roots.
I had those now. I didn’t know if Mech hated me or if he’d still think I was his friend, or if I’d abandoned him, or . . . well, what, really. My skin prickled and my gut twisted.
I had to get my head back in the game.
Glancing at Wadji, I nodded to myself. This might work. No one questioned an elder, and no one would think that someone was attempting to impersonate one. All Bo and I had to do was stick close to him, and the rest should be fairly simple. Clean.
I rubbed my eye. Should.
We crested a hill, the smell of blue assaulting my nose with the pungent power of sage-covered limes. I stopped at the top. “There’s got to be an easier way.”
Bo stopped beside me. “If you think of it, let us know. We’re following you.”
I raised my eyebrows and puffed air into one cheek.
The park was a huge scrap yard. From a distance, it looked like piles and piles of metal. People yelled—mostly bashers. The park filled the rolling valley, continuing over the far hill.
Wadji walked down the hill. “It is time to stop thinking. Those kids need food. We have no way of knowing how the time is shifting between this dimension and theirs.”
He had a point. “What did they eat this entire time?.” I jogged a couple of steps to catch up.
Bo followed. “Olivia said they ate what the planes provided, but they’re running out of food sources.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not. They stay away from the planes with living things like plants or creatures. But they have to forage to those planes in order to survive. They don’t always make it back.”
The noise grew in volume as we got closer to the more active portions of the park.
Bo said something.
I gestured to my ear and shook my head, unable to hear him.
He waved me off.
Up close, the piles of scrap turned out to be quite a bit more than metal. Sure, there were smashed bits of robots and wire. But to my right, a red flower petal lifted, then drooped again, its stamen eyes falling to the trash ground. Just below it, the green whiskers of a spotted cat shot off in several directions like fireworks, nearly taking off the tip of Wadji’s ear. The cat itself was lifeless, a husk of what it had been. A talking rock rolled itself to a bashing station and stopped.
Bashers were everywhere, tall, muscular, and red. They walked around with heavy hammers, hitting anything that moved in their trash piles. They worked under the cover of canvas awnings, yelling to one another.
Bo leaned in and said loudly, “Are they fighting?”
“No,” I yel
led back. “They’re just being neighborly.”
Drifts of sparkling dust in different colors rose into the air from each bashing station. They lifted from the augers and floated away, carrying the essence of the once living creatures.
I skirted around several of the trash heaps, staying clear of everyone I could. The bashers were driven and focused. Few looked up, and none stopped us.
A man in dark gray clothes with big, bright patches stepped out of a bashing station. His mouth fell open in a wide yawn and he scratched his shoulder as he moved in our direction.
I ducked my head and sped up, side-stepping him.
He greeted us with a slight smile and continued to pass.
His Who slammed into me. Dustman Finn. Born in Ireland before the big famine. Loved his kids. Hated seeing them grow up. Had hopes of making a family of his own. Not a replacement family. A new one. Loved Veronica.
He disappeared between one step and the next as he teleported to his next location.
Why had I collected his Who?
This couldn’t be good.
A BASHER LOOKED over his shoulder and yelled something, raising his beefy fist. His shoulder collided with mine.
Padjak had fallen in love with a creator when they were both very young. She hadn’t even know if she would develop into her full potential. Her mother and father hadn’t. He’d known he would be a basher through and through. His gift had hit early. Their marriage was approved by the elders, thinking her gift was weak and would not carry over into any child they might—
We disconnected as he passed by.
I gawked at his retreating back.
He shot me a disgusted look over his shoulder, his horizontal pupils contracting as he turned away. He had to protect his son.
A tall basher woman laughed heartily as she stepped out from under the awning of a station, walking through the rising cloud of multi-colored dust. She touched my arm to keep from bowling me over, her attention studiously elsewhere.
Shejah knew about Padjak’s son. Everyone did. He might have the skin of a basher, but his hair was the same blaring white as all creators and his eyes glowed since he’d turned twelve. Someone was going to call the elders on him, have his son taken away. It had to be her. She had her own to protect, a nephew with the gift of incubating. She’d have to be fast, but—what if someone did the same thing to her? Could she risk it?
I focused on Wadji as soon as she disconnected from me. “What’s going on?”
His cataract-covered eyes narrowed in the loose folds of his eyelids. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m collecting Who’s. I collected two bashers and a dustman so far.”
He pulled away, searching the immediate area. “A dustman, you say?”
“Yes. Wadji.”
“What was a dustman doing in Basher’s Park?” the dragon man muttered.
“Bigger picture.” I stood beside him, one hand out. “Why am I collecting Who’s?”
He backed away, a wary expression on his craggy face. “Did Candi touch you?”
Did she touch me. “If you’d been paying attention rather than hiding, you’d know the answer to that question.”
Wadji ducked behind a basher’s station and draped an extra bit of material along the trash pile to give us more privacy. He maintained as much distance between us as possible as Bo and I followed. “You cannot touch me. Candi cannot have my Who.”
“What do you mean? How would she collect it in the first place?”
He squinted at my wrapped wrist. “Did you check your wound?”
“Of course, I did,” Bo said.
“Did you see anything left behind?”
“I washed it out, so there shouldn’t be any toxins or anything.”
Wadji sighed, tipping his head to the side as if talking to a child. “We do not have bodies here in the same sense as you do on Earth, so you’ll have to shift your definition of toxins.”
Bo sighed, his lips flat. “Then what should I have been looking for?”
Wadji gestured to my wrist. “If you would, Captain?”
Bo glanced at me, but loosened the bindings.
My heartbeat skipped a beat. The dustman had touched me, as had the two bashers, but Bo’s hand was on my arm. No Who slammed into me. Why?
He examined the reddened skin. “What am I—wait. How on Earth did I miss this?”
Wadji took a step back.
Bo’s large fingers dug into my skin.
I danced in place as needles of pain shot up my arm. “What are you doing?”
“I see something.” He grunted, twisting his body, his face kinked in a vexed expression. “I almost have it.”
Knives of pain shot up my arm. “Dreams crack it, Bo! Stop it!”
He straightened, something caught between his forefinger and thumb. It was black and clung to me with strands of white that reminded me of a complex cobweb.
Each thread was a Who I’d collected. I examined it in wonder, then fixed my attention on Wadji. “A claw. She stuck a claw in me?”
Bo’s jaw dropped. “And then used that to track you? This woman’s a genius.”
“Shut up,” I said with a face frumpled frown.
He shot me a distracted half-grin.
Wadji kept his distance. “She is what you would call a hunter, though she’s not as limited as your Dreamlanders are.”
“What is she going to do with all these Who’s?”
The dragon man straightened, his shoulders no longer slumped as he pointed to the claw. “She will use each of those people to tell her when you’ve arrived. She’ll use their souls as traps.”
“But I don’t know the people whose Who’s I collected.”
Wadji sidestepped Bo. “Keep it that way. I have things to attend to.”
My free hand worked to extricate myself from the collected Whos. They snapped away from the claw one by one and seeped into my skin, traveling up my arm like white, glowing worms. “Wait, wait. Wadji. You’re not leaving us, are you?”
“Indeed, young dream man, I am.”
“But what’s going on?”
His gaze dropped to the claw. “That is what I intend to discover. Also, I need to ascertain why a dustman was found wandering a Dreamlander place.”
“I think we have bigger issues here, don’t you?”
He stopped, holding the material he’d draped over the trash pile. “Remember, you were the one who didn’t want me to tag along.”
I rolled my eyes and stashed the claw in my pouch.
“And, River.”
I looked up.
His eyes warmed with an old familiarity as though we’d known each other for lifetimes. “It’s good to see you again.”
The corner of my lip raised as my brow furrowed. “Yeah. You, too, I guess.”
He ducked out of the make-shift protection.
Bo took in a deep breath. “Okay. What now?”
I shrugged, tugging the strings of my pouch closed. “We continue to search for Rulak. Those kids need clothes and food.”
He pulled the red material back for me and sneezed. He blinked, shook it off, and gestured for me to precede him. “Lead the way, oh fearless leader.”
I leveled a dead pan expression up at him on my way past. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
He grinned and followed.
A ripping pop rippled over the deafening noise.
A hush fell over the park. The piles of trash quieted. The bashers stopped what they were doing.
I twisted, trying to see what happened.
“No! You can’t take him away,” Padjak roared. “That’s my boy! That’s my boy!”
I snuck around the nearest trash heap. Bashers dissolved into scrap heaps, disappearing like a magick trick as they found shadows to hide in.
Bo crept beside me, his hand on the hilt of his sword. He glanced at me, then turned his attention to the scene just around the pile.
A broken doll winked at me with her one working eye. She let out a so
bbing sigh, her cupid lips clamped shut as a tear fell down her cracked nose.
“Mace, you are under arrest by the laws of the elders for harboring a gift not befitting your station.”
A chill swept over me as I peered around the pile.
Several men, tall and skinny, stood in a tight circle facing outward. White masks covered their faces. The large, black diamonds plastered over their eyes crept onto their foreheads and down their cheeks. Thick, black thread crisscrossed over their mouths, sewing the tear closed. Their long limbs were covered in a jumpsuit. One leg and the opposite arm white, the other side black.
Runners.
I swallowed, my heart racing.
Two of the runners shifted. Their diamond-masked faces pointed in our direction.
They couldn’t detect us. Right? They were runners. They traveled through dimensions. They weren’t hunters, and even those needed a Who. I wasn’t projecting one, and neither was Bo. So what were they looking at?
I ducked back a bit more.
The sound of metal sliding against metal met my ears.
I focused on Bo and shook my head.
He didn’t release his half-drawn sword.
“He’s still apprenticed.” Padjak struggled against the three runners trying to hold him down. “He hasn’t graduated yet.”
“And he won’t,” a silky female voice said.
A female materialized out of the air without the tell-tale pop of Place. Her hair billowed around her like white and blue cotton-candy. Her long-tailed jacket fit her curved form, the metallic embroidery flashing in the light of the sky. She wore the same mask as her comrades, however, just a bit softer, slimmer, more feminine.
I groaned. A fartlek, or a lead runner. I’d never seen a female before, but I did know that uniform. And one that could teleport without making a sound? I bit my lips and glanced at Bo, willing him to be as silent as possible.
She clasped her hands behind her back. “The elders’ mandate states that rogue gifts are protected as long as they remain in their apprenticeship, but there’s a new rule. The apprenticeship has an expiration date.”
The big basher shoved against the runners holding him and roared. “You can’t do this! He’s protected.”
The lead runner scanned the area, as if seeing all the other people hiding in the shadows. “Understand this, Dreamlanders. The elders will provide you no loopholes. You will surrender your rogue gifts. You cannot hide from us.”
Dream Killers - Complete Season 1 (The Dream Killers Book 3) Page 16
