Darkness Falls: Reveler Series 1 (14 page)

She would not, however, waste energy attempting to cover herself. Malcolm Rook had taught her that. She had darksight, a rare talent. And could drown people, scary. And she was tough as nails—she’d had to be to finish raising Maze. So she was not going to whimper and scream. And she was not going down without a fight.

Joshua was not what he seemed.

Where was he taking her? Damned if she knew.

The farther he dragged her, the less he appeared to be a little boy. She’d glimpsed it before, the first time she’d seen him. Her darksight had shown her true. This was not Malcolm’s brother. It was a thing in the shape of a boy. It had climbed into Malcolm’s nightmare, taken it over, and used the kid’s appearance to skulk around, wearing Joshua’s memory as a disguise.

In retribution for the torture
this
Joshua had put Malcolm through, Jordan struck at it again. But the boy, unfazed, jerked her forward.

She didn’t care when she fell. Didn’t care that he kicked her in the guts or that her knees were bloody and scabby with grains of sand. She was so pissed off, she didn’t feel pain.

The little fucker was going to die.

Just as soon as she figured out how to kill him.

***

A dark skid in the sand, wet with blood.

Rook could guess whose.

He sniffed, and smelled her. In spite of the wind, he felt a hint of her warmth again, brushing against his skin. The wan light was tinted blue-violet, bright with anger.

How did a man catch up with his own nightmare?

He had the answer now: when his woman was fighting it every step of the way.

***

Joshua attempted to drag her forward by her hair.

The sand had become less deep, the ground harder, like bedrock. The wind howled louder and louder, overriding all other senses. She resisted forward movement with all her strength. She grabbed at her hair, tried to yank it out of the child’s hands.

Much farther, and she’d be dead. He wasn’t taking her home for a tea party. He’d been lying in wait.

Well. He’d picked the wrong Chimera. She was going to drown his ass. Drown him for real, as in, until he stopped twitching. Malcolm had shown her how to reach out with a part of herself—the darksight—and push.

Joshua’s stance twisted, and she knew he was about to strike her again. Her scalp burned at the roots where he yanked her along.

With all the willpower in her body, she walloped him with her mind.

Joshua flew back, taking a fistful of dark strands with him. His body thumped, skidding on his back over the wavering grains of sand.

Jordan crab-crawled away, then scrambled to her feet to run, though she had no idea which way to go. She put muscle into her speed, dived into the howling monsoon, praying it would cover her tracks. The wind pushed against her, but she fought it. And crashed headlong into a wall.

The wall was Malcolm Rook’s chest. He’d found her; she’d never doubted he would. Now they had to go the fuck the other way.

“It’s not your brother,” she warned breathlessly.

“No, not Joshua.” Malcolm’s arm came around her bare waist.

With a shriek, Joshua dropped out of the sky on top of them. He gouged long, bloody lines across Malcolm’s face.

In panic and fury, Jordan
pushed
again. Harder. With a distorted moan, not-Joshua jackknifed into darkness and wind.

“This way,” Malcolm stretched his arm forward.

She didn’t understand how he knew where to go, but she trusted it and they jogged, arms around each other, into the storm.

Another inhuman shriek, and Jordan was jerked by her ankle. Fell right out of Malcolm’s grasp and was dragged, belly down, away into the dark, her fingers making tracks in the sand.

Malcolm was suddenly there, standing over her, while Joshua the creature ripped at and tore him.

She
pushed
, tears blinding her.

Joshua was flung back again.

Malcolm helped her back up, but staggered as they tried to move forward. She put herself under his shoulder to take some of his weight. “Where do I go?”

Blood flowed down his chest, sticky-slick on skin, darkening his jeans. He was clumsy and weak, but he lifted his head, gaze seeking left-right, then finding and fixed:
That way.

Again they drove forward together until she felt the shimmer of a boundary.
Thank God.

And they stumbled into some fantasy Rêve, a surreal medieval dungeon. Revelers were decked in costume—sexy warrior girl with a huge hammer, cloaked man with hood and staff, some Orc-faced dude with a fat sword.

The players all stopped and stared at her, too stunned to help.

Malcolm said the columns of the Agora were always there. She lost no momentum as she reached forward, seeking. Malcolm dropped onto the stone floor. And sure enough, the great column appeared before her. Her palm made contact just as Joshua shrieked again behind her.

Marshal Harlen Fawkes stepped into view, though smaller than she remembered him.

He took in their ravaged, blood-soaked appearance: she, naked; Malcolm, a heap.

“What the—?” Fawkes said.

“Help!” Jordan pointed toward the boundary, a castle wall, where Joshua had followed them into the Rêve.

“It’s not a boy. It’s not a boy!” She knew she wasn’t making sense.

All the Revelers fixed their gazes upon him. Witnesses.

Then Joshua looked at them all, turned, and walked out once more into the Scrape.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Chimera is behind you, and that’s what matters.” Coll sat in Rook’s desk chair, elbows to knees, gaze up and steady. Maisie munched a thumbnail behind him by the windows. “If Malcolm Rook says there’s something in the Scrape, then there is.”

Rook understood the subtext beneath the compliment. The Rêves weren’t going to close. They weren’t even going to slow attendance. It had too powerful a hold on people’s imaginations. It was a panacea for all the ills of the waking world. No pain, just release. Unless they were dragged out into the Scrape, that is.

Jordan scoffed, which meant she got Coll’s meaning, too.

“The testimony of the Rêvelers was inconsistent,” Coll continued. “Marshal Fawkes, however, not only corroborates everything you said, Jordan, but he shares your outrage as well.”

“It’s going to take time,” Rook said to her.

“I have a
bald
patch on my
head
.”

Her hair had fallen out where not-Joshua had grabbed it. Rook didn’t think it was noticeable, but Jordan was touchy about it. Though he was beyond exhaustion, his injuries hadn’t transferred to the waking world.

“Everyone has been warned to be more vigilant.” Coll cut a quick, sharp glance to Rook. “We will report anything unusual, like personal nightmares in pursuit.”

Rook took the jab. They’d already been through the Joshua thing at length: when the nightmare had begun; when the boy had first crossed what boundaries; what made Rook choose to keep it secret. It had been a mistake.

Coll groaned as he stood. “You both still planning to go back in after Vince Blackman?”

This was yet another fight between them. He was adamant that a new Chimera should not go out into the Scrape. And Jordan refused to let a man suffer because of her actions. Rook swore that this would be his fastest tracking ever. In and out.

Coll was working with Maisie on Vince Blackman’s father.

“I have something to do first this morning,” Rook said, “But yeah, we’ll track him down once it’s done.”

“Good enough. Maisie, with me.” Coll’s tone was hard.

She made a face at him. “Yeah, I got to talk to Jordan first.”

“I’ll be in the car.” He walked to the door, then paused and looked back. “Jordan, the stuff from your apartment will be moved to storage. We’ll work out the details of your life among us later.”

“Take your time,” Jordan said. “It’s up to Malcolm whether he wants to move or not.”

Rook felt himself smiling, the bolts of tension in his shoulders releasing, even when he was keyed up and angry. How did she do that?

He finally noticed Coll staring at his face, and sent him a questioning glance. But Coll just smiled back and said, “I’ll be in touch,” and left.

***

“You’ve
got
to get me away from him,” Maze murmured low. “He thinks he’s taking me to Vegas to find Blandman’s dad.”

They were huddled in a corner of what could only generously be called a kitchen.

“Blackman,” Jordan corrected. “And Vince is in serious danger at the moment.” She had put him there personally. The urgency to go back and find him bordered on panic. She would not be responsible for the death of another human being. No matter what Vince had planned for her, he didn’t deserve to be left out in the Scrape. No one did.

What if not-Joshua found him?

“I just need a little money,” Maze said with a sly smile, “and I’ll slip out the back.
Steve
can sit in his fucking car all day long waiting, for all I care.”

More games. “No, Maisie. You go to Vegas. You take care of this. Steve is your chance to get everything straight. To take your life back. Don’t screw this up for yourself. I can’t be there to clean up after you.”

“I never asked you to.”

Ha
. “You just did.” Jordan grabbed her sister and hugged her close. “Don’t blow this. Go to Vegas and see it through. Try something different.”

It was time to let her go. Fall or fly, it was up to her. This had been coming for a while, and they both knew it.

When Jordan pulled back, Maze had a miserable look on her face. “I don’t wanna.”

“You will. Do it for me.”

Maze made her pouty face, and Jordan knew that her sister couldn’t do what was expected of her for long. She was driven to break out of every box she’d ever been put in.

So Jordan tried a little subterfuge. The idea had been kicking around in her brain since yesterday.

“Go to Vegas to solve the problem, but whatever you do…” She paused for drama. “…don’t get involved with Steve.”

Maze looked alarmed.

“He’s too old for you. It will only lead to disaster. So don’t even try.”

“I would never.”

“Good. Don’t.”

“I can’t believe you’d think I would.”

“Then there’s no problem. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

Jordan swatted her on her butt to get her moving out the door and down the stairs. At the last minute she yelled, “Call when you get there.”

She was going to worry. She couldn’t help herself.

***

Maze sat herself down in the front passenger seat of Steve Coll’s very boring silver sedan and slammed the door. “My sister just tried to reverse-psychology me into having sex with you.”

He started the car. Checked his goddamn mirrors. Slowly pulled out onto a street with no traffic. She was sure he was doing it on purpose. He couldn’t be this anal.

She expected a reaction. Got nothing.

Huh.

He was making her crazy. She had to do something to piss him off, or this trip was going to be awful. She was tempted to jab him in the arm or ribs. Or be truly disgusting and grab his junk.

The thought made her laugh. She might have done it if Jory hadn’t made a little sense upstairs just now. Steve—what an irritating name—
was
her last chance to straighten out. The people she’d been working for had stopped being fun a long time ago. She needed out, which meant cooperating.

She settled for a mild rebellion. Music. Loud music would at least give him a headache. She reached forward, but before her fingertips could hit the On button, his hand tightened around her wrist. She tried to jerk free, but he was stronger.

“It doesn’t work,” he said in that mild tone of his. Yet his hand on her arm was not mild at all. It almost burned.

She didn’t believe him, but was startled enough to draw back. To frown.

To give him a second look.

***

The drive took more than three hours, but it felt like five minutes. The dread in Jordan’s belly was cold and oily by the time he finally pulled into a neighborhood.

This could make or ruin everything.

Rook had been mostly silent on the drive. Once or twice he’d attempted to start a conversation, mostly about Chimera and what her next steps were. She’d responded when he asked her something, and she had let the dialogue dissolve when his thoughts distracted him again.

She understood why he wanted to do this. Joshua had nearly killed them both. Malcolm had to take away whatever power the kid still had over him. And then they could go after Vince Blackman.