Dream Walker (Bailey Spade Book 1)

by Dima Zales

  “Wow,” I mutter, “if only it were that easy with everyone else.”

  Felix doesn’t reply. In fact, now that I’m paying attention, I hear faint snoring on the other end of our connection. Of course, he has been awake all this time. Oh, well. I guess he’ll miss this.

  Reaching out with the hand Kain contaminated earlier, I touch his forehead and fall into his dream world.

  I find myself in Kain’s kitchen.

  He’s talking animatedly on the phone—I think it’s about taxes—so I make myself invisible before he can spot me. Decades without sleep and his subconscious concocts a dream this boring? How disappointing. In any case, I can breathe a sigh of relief. He was indeed already in REM sleep, so I’ve skipped over the dangerous subdreams. And unlike Bernard, Kain seems to have no deep-seated nightmares to worry about—nightmares I would be in right now if they existed. Unless he really dislikes talking on the phone to his accountant? It wouldn’t be that crazy. When it comes to death and taxes, vampires don’t have to worry too much about the former.

  I grope for my empty wrist. Because I’m in Kain’s dream and not Pom’s, Pom doesn’t instantly show up here. That’s probably for the best, as I think he’d prefer to miss the bit with the werewolf.

  Dream manipulation time.

  I manifest the date and time I want and morph the environment to an international airport at midday. I always do this as smoothly as I can manage. In this case, the kitchen already has barstools, so it becomes an airport bar. Kain doesn’t question this new reality, so I slowly add noises of talking people and clanking glasses.

  Still good. Kain keeps chatting on the phone.

  I end the call.

  He shrugs and leaves the bar as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I get bolder, adding details from his story: screams of bloody murder from the werewolf’s victims, panicked humans, fellow Enforcers rushing into action. It’s more art than science, giving the dreamer enough details that they can run with the dream from there, their subconscious adding in whatever is needed. As Kain begins to do this, I relax and watch the events unfold.

  Foaming at the mouth, the wolf rips an old lady into pieces. Kain shoots it with a tranquilizer dart, and it lets go of the human and dashes for Terminal 8. Filth and a few other Enforcers are already waiting there, holding stun guns.

  Uninterested in the bloody outcome, I ask myself a single question: Is this dream a memory? My power confirms it, just as it did in Bernard’s dream. Good. If Kain were the killer, I’d be in a vulnerable real-world position, being in his dungeon bedroom and all.

  Job done, I yank myself from the dream and into the waking world.

  Before Kain wakes up, I use what’s left of the sanitizer to finally clean my hand.

  After I’m done, I softly call, “Kain. Wake up.”

  Fangs out, he leaps off the bed as if to battle for his life. Spotting me, he halts, recognition appearing in his eyes.

  “You’re officially not guilty of killing Gemma,” I tell him. “This clears Firth and a bunch of other Enforcers, too.”

  He massages the bridge of his nose. “I was in my kitchen and the airport. That makes no sense, but at the time it was so logical and real. I somehow knew the date and time without looking at any clocks. Felt it, almost.”

  I nod. “Dreamers almost never ask themselves, ‘How did I get here?’ Those who do sometimes realize they’re in a dream. It’s called lucid dreaming, and it can cause problems for me, so I’m glad it’s rare.”

  “I think I could go for centuries without dreaming again.” He strides out of the bedroom, and I gladly follow.

  Without stopping, he heads out of the apartment and down a spindly corridor teeming with monks. When we reach a dilapidated wooden door, he opens it. “This is your new quarters.”

  The place looks spartan, with just a small bed and a wooden table inside a small windowless room, but it’s luxurious compared to the dungeon cell. It even has a washroom with a shower and a proper toilet.

  “The stuff you wanted is there.” He gestures at a pile of plastic bags behind the bed. “You have a little time while I make the arrangements for the Councilors to go to sleep.”

  When he leaves, I rummage through the shopping bags. Yep, everything I asked for is here, adult diapers and laxatives included. I fish out the bananas, water, and sanitizer and set it all on the table.

  Vampire blood has many side effects, one of them being the suppression of hunger along with sleep. While on it, I eat based on common sense—a few hundred calories every few hours. I’m actually way behind on my quota, so I sanitize seven bananas and force myself to eat them one after another—which takes twenty minutes that feel like five hours.

  Feeling like a stuffed ape, I chase the fruit with plenty of water and use the toilet while I have it handy. A side effect of eating so rarely and being constantly dehydrated is that I don’t have to do this often.

  The drowsiness of a food coma hits me so hard I have to slap my face to wake myself up. But I can’t sleep now. Kain will be back any second. I sanitize my hands until my skin feels raw, then pull out the vial with the diluted vampire blood. Keeping it out of sight of Felix’s camera, I take the tiniest sip I can manage.

  Instantly, I’m wide awake. A wave of orgasmic pleasure sweeps over me, double the intensity of the last time.

  Puck.

  Imagining the wall is Filth’s face, I slam my fist into it as hard as I can. There’s no pain at all, only pressure, and the pleasure continues unabated.

  Double puck.

  I smash my fist into the same spot again and again, leaving bloody prints on the stone. When the skin splits on my knuckles, it mends instantly—the healing properties of vampire blood. If I break any bones, they will mend also, all without a hint of pain.

  Eventually, the pleasure subsides, leaving only the equally unwelcome sexual arousal.

  Wow, this time was bad. Even diluted, it’s affecting me almost beyond my control. I’ve got to solve this case and save Mom so I can get off the vile substance, else I might end up following in Ariel’s footsteps. For now, I dilute the half-empty vial with water until it’s full again. Maybe an even more diluted version will work more like it used to?

  Now I wish Kain would come back so I could do something useful.

  Actually, there is something I can do. If Kit has gone to bed, which would be reasonable, I could check if she’s behind all the crimes. Despite what she said about Tatum, she’s still one of my main suspects.

  Touching Pom, I go into a trance and meet Pom’s dream form in my palace. He floats contentedly in the air, waving a furry paw at me in greeting.

  “I’m going into Kit’s dreams.” I give myself my fiery hair. “I’d like some privacy.”

  If Kit didn’t lie, her dreams will be X-rated, and that’s not an experience I want to share with a fuzzy creature with no visible genitals.

  “I’ll go play Jenga,” he says. A tower of wooden blocks appears on the floor. “Go do what you do.”

  I pat his head and hasten to the tower of sleepers.

  I’m lucky for a change. Kit is here sleeping, and so is Felix—my earlier guess was right.

  I touch Kit’s forehead and end up smack in the middle of an orgy featuring every type of Cognizant I can think of, plus some I’ve never seen. Alrighty, then. It should be easy to morph this dream into the situation Kit described earlier.

  I begin by giving Kit a sense that this is all happening on the date and time when Gemma was ripped apart. Then I remove a dozen or so participants and turn one of the remaining ones into Lola.

  Almost there. The problem is that this Lola isn’t doing what Kit described. Feeling like a total perv, I take control of Dream Lola and have her ask Kit to turn into whatever she described to me earlier, making sure to request the right number of phalluses while I’m at it.

  The scene starts to look like what Kit described—and as soon as it does, I know it’s a memory.

  Whew. As much a
s I want this investigation to be over, Kit is my friend, so I’m really glad she’s not the culprit.

  On the way out of Kit’s dream world, I contemplate talking to Felix but decide against it. Between the vampire blood and Kit’s dreams, I’m too sexed up to face him.

  But there’s something I can do to take the edge off.

  With a deep, delicious inhalation, I think back to the luxurious bedroom Valerian created around us using his illusionist powers. I begin the recreation with the big bed swathed in silk sheets and covered in rose petals before creating the man himself, in all his (probably fake) glory.

  “Hi, beautiful,” Dream Valerian murmurs. “Finally found time for me?”

  “Come closer.” I make my clothes disappear with a flick of my powers.

  Ripping the buttons off his shirt, he strides toward me.

  My overclocked libido goes into overdrive.

  Dream Valerian kisses me deeper than last time, his right hand stroking my lower back as his left slides—

  “What is the meaning of this?” Kain’s voice sounds like thunder.

  With a sigh, I pull myself away from the dream world and open my eyes to Kain’s fury.

  “You said your power has limits,” he growls with a lisp, due to his extended fangs. “How dare you waste it on pleasuring yourself?”

  What the hell? How does he know? Can he smell it on me?

  Yuck. I need to bathe my brain in sanitizer.

  Seeing his eyes turn into mirrors, I blurt, “I was doing my job.”

  His eyes fade to normal, giving me hope that I’ll never learn what he intended to glamour me into doing.

  “Explain,” he hisses.

  “Kit. I verified her alibi, and it checks out.”

  “I see.” His fangs retreat. “I spoke to Lola the day after the murder, but it’s good to confirm Kit’s story. That nymph would say anything to protect her insatiable girlfriend.”

  He knew? Then again, Kit has never been shy about her adventures. Oh, well. I grab a water bottle and pocket my hand sanitizer. “I’m ready to connect with others and check alibis.”

  “Let’s go to my quarters.”

  His quarters again? Why?

  Given the earlier threat of glamour, I don’t ask.

  When we reach our destination, he leads me toward his dungeon/bedroom—which makes all my earlier concerns resurface.

  Just before entering the dreaded room, he wheels around, so quickly I nearly smash into him.

  “This is going to stay between us,” he says harshly. “Understood?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I stare at him, my heart rate doubling.

  “It’s a delicate situation,” he continues. “The woman hates dreamwalkers with a passion.”

  I blink at him, even more confused.

  “Just go inside,” he snaps. “Go, or I’ll make you.”

  With Pom turning pitch black on my wrist, I enter the cursed room and freeze, unable to believe what I’m seeing.

  It’s Gertrude.

  She’s lying on Kain’s bed, staring emptily at the ceiling.

  “She’s my primary suspect,” Kain says as though she’s not there. “She envied Tatum and Ryan’s marriage—don’t ask me why—and she fiercely and openly despised Gemma. You already know how she feels about dreamwalkers.”

  “But no one died by rotting to death,” I say.

  “Of course not. She’s not stupid enough to kill that way—she’d be the only suspect.”

  I peer at her unmoving body. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I had to glamour her,” Kain says. “She has a huge problem sleeping in front of others, to put it mildly.”

  “She’s got good reason.” I step to the side and back, putting him between me and Gertrude. “Between her REM Sleep Disorder and the gangrene-giving, it would be dangerous for any witnesses.”

  “And yet I’ll make her sleep, and you’ll check to make sure she’s not behind the murders.” He turns to the empty-eyed woman and instructs in a honey-laced voice, “Gertrude, cuff your right ankle to the right bottom corner of the bed.”

  She sits up and does as ordered. Another command, and she locks her left ankle and right hand, leaving herself mostly spread-eagled. I expect Kain to do something about her left hand, but he doesn’t.

  “With that arm free, she can still grab one of us and make whatever she touches rot,” I tell him. “You’ve got to lock it up.”

  “Do you want to lock it up?” he asks with a sneer. “I’m not getting anywhere near her skin.”

  So vampires can rot. What a gross discovery.

  I look Gertrude over. With her short skirt and sleeveless top, she’s showing way too much skin to approach without a hazmat suit.

  “Gertrude, sleep,” Kain croons.

  She closes her eyes right away, her breathing evening out.

  Wow, I’d give a lot for that particular power.

  “Now do your thing,” Kain orders.

  I gingerly step closer to observe her eyelids.

  “What’s the holdup?” he asks.

  I turn back toward him. “I have to wait until she’s in REM sleep.”

  “Isn’t REM sleep when that free arm becomes a problem?”

  I sigh. “If I go in now, I’ll have to deal with the subdream, which carries its own danger.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “I could die in the dream world.”

  The eyebrow goes almost comically high.

  “If I die there, I’ll become homicidally insane.”

  The eyebrow comes back down and meets its neighbor in a frown. “Is that how things work for all dreamwalkers?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Kain’s gaze sharpens. “Could that have happened to Leal? As in, he died during dreamwalking and became—”

  “Didn’t Gemma get killed after he was already dead? Besides, are you suggesting he killed himself using those birds?”

  “We do have to consider the possibility that there might’ve been more than one killer,” he says with less enthusiasm.

  “If it was Leal, the murders would’ve been a lot more brutal,” I say. “All of you would’ve known he’d gone crazy. He’d have acted like a puck.”

  “I see,” Kain says. “Still, I say it’s a good thing you’ve been focusing most of your attention on Gemma’s murder.”

  “Right.” I go back to watching Gertrude’s eyelids.

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  “I just told you. The subdream—”

  “Go in,” he snaps. “And don’t die. Waiting is riskier, trust me.”

  I back away from the bed as his eyes turn to mirrors. “I’ll do it—”

  His eyes fade to normal.

  “—but there’re a few more problems. If I survive the subdream section, my power will force Gertrude to snap into REM sleep. That means her loose hand will become an issue.”

  “I’ll pull you away from her as soon as I see signs of REM sleep,” he says. “You can then come back into her dreams from a distance, as I know you can do.”

  He knows? I was trying to keep that under wraps.

  “That might work,” I say grudgingly. “But there’s another, bigger problem. For me to use my power, I have to touch her—and if I touch her, I’ll lose my finger.” I glance warily at Gertrude’s exposed skin.

  “Can you enter someone’s dream by touching their hair?” he asks. “I’ve seen Gertrude zone out while one of the monks was giving her a trim, which tells me the hair should be safe to touch.”

  “‘Should be’ doesn’t sound reassuring.”

  His eyes turn into slits. “Can you or can you not use hair to do your job?”

  “No idea. In theory, I don’t see why not. The body has hair all over, so I’ve probably done it inadvertently. But I’ve never tried it with the hair on someone’s head, because that’s a cesspool of dandruff, oil, mites, germs—”

  Inside their slits, his eyes turn into mirrors again. “
Bailey,” he says in that special voice, “you’ll touch the tips of Gertrude’s hair, far from her skin. Now.”

  I attempt to fight the compulsion, but it overtakes me even faster than when he glamoured me before the Council meeting. My body moves forward on its own, my arm extends, and my finger lands on the strand of hair farthest away from Gertrude’s face.

  If my face were under my control, it would be cringing.

  To my relief, my finger doesn’t rot. Then again, maybe that’s still to come.

  “Bailey, I release you from glamour,” Kain says ceremoniously. “Enter her dream now.”

  The only reason I don’t explode into obscenities is that I’d wake Gertrude, and she’d rot me first, ask questions later.

  “Stop it with the hesitation,” Kain growls. “I told you I’ll pull you away as soon as I see her eyelids move. Now do your job.”

  Fine. I hope this works, else I’m fairly sure he’ll make me touch her where my finger would be in even more trouble.

  Gritting my teeth so hard my jaw hurts, I will myself to enter Gertrude’s dreams.

  The hair is a go. I catch a whiff of ozone and experience the sensation of falling as the room darkens around me, propelling me into the familiar trance.

  Now I just hope the subdream doesn’t drive me insane.

  Chapter Twenty

  I’m standing on a calm black ocean with magma skies above. In the distance, two creatures ride toward me astride some other kind of creatures, hooting out horrific battle cries as they come.

  Something snakes from my wrist to the ground and grows into a furry unicorn.

  “We’d better get out of here,” I tell my new steed. “Whatever those things are, they don’t sound friendly.”

  The unicorn snorts, and as soon as I clasp his neck, he gallops away so fast his hooves barely touch the water.

  The battle cries, if that’s what they are, draw closer behind us. They’re terrifying. I imagine that’s how pucks’ teeth must sound scraping the bones of their victims. Still, for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a message embedded in those ugly shrieks, just in a language I don’t know.