Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 (21 page)

“Most showed up in the hallway, up top, and in larger areas.” Lill fingered her raggedy jacket sleeve. “Makes sense, I guess. They’re drawn to the person who created them, so of course some appeared in your room.”

“I didn’t do this.” Maggie’s stomach bottomed out. Again. Luckily, it was empty and the nausea didn’t amount to anything. “Karen was in the dreamsphere like before. Why are you blaming me?”

“They made a beeline for this room,” Zeke told her.

“That’s not indicative, considering my history,” Maggie argued. Wraiths had been drawn to her since day one, but only in the past few days had Zeke and the others decided that must mean she was responsible for them.

“I realize that, but…” He cleared his throat. “We lost six people.”

“Including Constance and Roberts,” Lill said, face drawn. “We can’t even find their fucking DNA, much less their bodies. They’re just gone. Guess they got eaten.”

“T-Rexes and were-creatures will eat anything until you dust ’em, but vamps and zombies?” Zeke ran a hand through his hair, uneasy. “That’s not how they behave. This shit is unreal.”

“God. I’m so sorry.” Helplessly, Maggie gripped the hilt of her dagger as if she could slash the truth away. “I honestly don’t think I left my conduit unlocked. I was so careful. And, ah, since I’ve slipped up before, I know what it feels like to have wraiths exploit you.”

When she’d been attacked by wraiths in the sphere, she’d killed any that had touched her. She hadn’t allowed them to use her for her conduit. Never again. Any who’d tried had died for it, another elephant in the room that had to be discussed.

“After you exit the sphere, they can use a malingering conduit without you sensing it,” Zeke said. “Dammit, I didn’t train you well enough to tell up from down. I’ve been preoccupied with fighting the effects of the tangible.”

Was he remembering what had happened between them this morning? His inability to resist her, her inability to resist him. Their desire. Their emotions.

Tonight, he’d be with Karen. Maggie scowled.

Lillian sighed. “You two, I swear to God. I should kick both your asses.”

“Zeke said I had some skills that were graduate level,” she reminded them hastily—more for Lill’s benefit than his. “I’m not a complete neonati. I’ve got enough of a handle on the dreamsphere to recognize when a wraith uses me to land in the terra firma. I can lock conduits, and I think I’m ready to orate.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Look, it’s my fault, not yours. I’m a crap mentor. I can’t do this. I can’t seem to…” He tore his gaze from her like he couldn’t bear to see the evidence of his failure.

“It wasn’t me,” Maggie insisted. “I would have felt it.”

Lill shook her head. “Had to be you, Mags. Adi had us locked down, including Karen, and nobody else was around. We couldn’t conduit ourselves out, much less a wraith.”

Speaking of Adi, why weren’t Lill and Zeke angry at the vigil? Lillian had been furious when Adi had sealed them in the sphere and given Zeke a nosebleed.

“I was close enough to you guys to be affected by the vigil-block too. Therefore, I couldn’t have manifested wraiths.” Maggie didn’t add that she’d trounced Adi, and that was why the block had vanished. Since nobody had acknowledged her presence in the sphere again, it was possible they didn’t realize she’d assaulted the vigil. Hell, she could have lied and said she hadn’t made it to sphere at all tonight.

Let them blame the manifestations on her then.

Trouble was, she wasn’t a liar.

“I was tranced in,” Maggie explained, “but invisible again. I saw when Adi—”

“You tranced instead of natural sleep?” Adi joined their small group and studied Maggie like she was a poisonous snake. Her beautiful face was drawn with fatigue, the result of placing the vigil-block, and she leaned against Lillian for support. “You weren’t asked to trance, Margaret. You were told to protect yourself in the sleep sphere. It’s not permitted for phase two disciples to trance alone.”

“I couldn’t fall asleep. I got worried.”

Adi had never been a person Maggie distrusted. From the very first, she’d exuded sincerity and kindness like no one Maggie had ever met. But now, Maggie found herself wanting to be anywhere the vigil was not. She leaned against the cold metal door, forgetting it wasn’t completely latched. It swung open behind her.

Adi gasped.

Lill didn’t gasp. “What the hell? Are those more monster corpses?” She practically dragged Adi past Maggie to inspect the Whedons on the floor. “Are you sure you killed these all the way dead?”

Zeke and Maggie followed the women into the room. The wraith stench, in the poorly ventilated chamber, was almost more than anyone could bear. Lill grimaced. Zeke coughed. Adi clapped a hand over her mouth and nose. Hopefully she wouldn’t need the trash can, because it was already contaminated.

Maggie exchanged a glance with Zeke—or tried to. He was staring at the corpses as if he’d never seen a dead wraith before. Technically, he hadn’t, but he knew what she’d done, what she was capable of. She’d told him this morning before they’d made love.

“I didn’t kill these. All I had was a knife.” Maggie rubbed her tennis shoe in a skein of wraith dust in the floor. “The bodies were already here when I snapped out of the trance.”

Sort of. They’d come through with her. When she’d opened her eyes, there they’d been. Dragging corpses into the terra firma didn’t affect her the same as dragging living wraiths into the terra firma—no surge of invasion, no sensation of wrongness pouring through her body. If she had to theorize, the corpses tumbled through the gap she created when she shoved herself free of the sphere.

For all she knew, she might have left corpses behind on the gray, swirling dreamsphere ground. Would they be moldering there when she or anyone went back? She wished she could mull it over with Lill and Zeke, but not Adi. Adi’s behavior in the sphere, what with hurting Zeke and locking everyone down, worried her.

She really, really needed to get Zeke alone. Why were he and Lill not angry with Adi? Zeke held grudges, and it didn’t take much for him to be ill-tempered. Had Maggie missed further developments after she’d jetted out of the sphere as fast as her brain could carry her?

Had Adi done something, told them something, that explained her odd behavior?

Adi’s voice, through her hand, was muffled yet distressed. “I simply don’t understand why we have lifeless manifestations in the terra firma again.” She peered at the bodies, nudging the caved-in skull of a Whedon vamp with her plastic clog. Gray matter oozed out of the monster’s head. Dark red blood, though not much of it, decorated the floor. “It appears they were dispatched by—well, I can’t tell. These do not appear to be typical wounds. I see no blade marks or punctures.”

Since everyone else was staring, Maggie allowed herself a moment to study the vamps too. A couple had bashed in skulls, and others were missing limbs or parts of torsos. There wasn’t a whole corpse among them. Internally they appeared to be animal, with blood and guts and organs and bones and such.

Except the odor—that was nothing from this green Earth.

“Perhaps a sledgehammer?” Adi yawned hugely behind her hand. “Although this one appears to have been ripped.”

Maggie remembered how easy it had been to drive her hands and feet into the wraith bodies in the sphere—how gratifying it had been. The shredding and rending had been a revenge of sorts, and their bodies had offered no more resistance than a tub of rice pudding. She’d torn them to pieces.

Apparently, she packed quite the punch.

Surreptitiously, she glanced at her hands. Aside from the scalp injury she’d gotten fighting the zombies and the cut from yesterday, she had no bruising or signs of her killing spree. She flexed and only felt achy.

Adi yawned again. “Gracious. Another one and my face might split open.”

“You need to go to bed,” Lillian told the vigil sternly.

“Not yet. It was a brief vigil-block. I merely require a stimulant.” Her cellphone buzzed, and she lifted it to her ear. “Sharma. What? Here? I’ll be right there.”

She hung up, closed her eyes, and pressed her index fingers to her temples as if centering herself. “I do not have time for this.”

“What’s wrong? More wraiths?” Lill asked her.

“Worse. I have to go.” Though visibly depleted, Adi tottered out of the room, hailing soldiers as she fled.

“What could be worse than more wraiths?” Maggie wondered aloud. “More corpses? More dead coma patients?”

“If it was important, she would have told us.” Lill flipped a monster onto its back. Ribs stuck out of its chest like broken corn stalks. She squatted beside the head and peeled back withered lips to inspect the fangs. “I don’t know what in the flying blue hell is going on here. Only thing I can figure is these ugly mothers aren’t entirely dead.”

“Maybe you should get your fingers out of the bitey part, then,” Zeke suggested.

Maggie backed to the half-open door and glanced into the hallway. No one else was coming.

“This might be a good time to tell Lill,” she said in a low voice.

Lill stood, wiped her fingers on her dirty pants, and gave the vampire a kick. “Tell me what, that you two idiots slept together?”

“Can’t tell you that,” Zeke said. “Because we didn’t.”

Lill crossed her arms. “Bullshit.”

Zeke threw up his hands. “Come on, Lill. I know what’s at stake. I can keep it in my pants if I have to. Maggie’s my student, so I have to.”

Maggie opened her mouth. She wasn’t sure if she was going to agree or disagree with Zeke, but the expression of utter disgust on his face stopped her.

Perhaps he was disappointed in himself for not waiting until she matriculated, until it was permitted. Or was it more than that?

Nothing about their lovemaking disgusted her. She understood why it had been a bad idea, but it didn’t erase the fact she was in love with Zeke. So very much in love with him.

His disgust—it hurt.

“I was going to say we should tell her what I did and ask about the scroll.” Maggie coughed to hide the pain in her voice. “Maybe she’s heard about it.”

“What did you do besides trance in when you weren’t supposed to?” Zeke asked. “Come to think of it, if you were in the sphere, why couldn’t anyone sense you? I should have been able to through the tangible, at the very least.”

“Didn’t we cover this the last time we were in the sphere together? When you woke Karen?”

“You weren’t in the sphere when we woke Karen,” Zeke said. “You were—” He frowned. “Keeping watch or something.”

Lill gaped at him. “Did a wraith eat your brain? Adi insisted Maggie trance in with you yesterday to keep you grounded. Maggie lost her grip and caused the first code one too.”

“Except I didn’t,” Maggie said.

Zeke closed his eyes and shook his head rapidly. “Right, right. She had to have been there. I’m not thinking straight.”

Was he faking memory loss to send Maggie a message that he didn’t trust Lill enough to confide in her? Lill believed Maggie was responsible for the code ones, and the code ones had resulted in ten deaths already, including Lill’s former student Constance.

“Even though Karen was in the sphere both times we had code ones,” she said to Lill, testing the water, “you think I’m responsible?”

“I’m not saying I think Karen’s turned over a new leaf, but she’s a mess,” Lill said. “She’s too weak to pull a manifestation this size. It takes massive capacity, and all she can do is sit around and blubber.”

“Leave Karen out of this,” Zeke said. “You’d cry too if you’d been trapped in that hell for a year.”

Both Lill and Maggie stared at Zeke as if he’d grown an extra head.

“What?” he said defensively. “I’m agreeing with Lill. Karen doesn’t have all that much left in the brain box.” He tapped his skull. “I doubt she’s still L5. Your abilities degrade if you get hurt bad enough. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t matriculate her. She could be as low as L2 now, and an L2 conduit only transmits, what, a wraith or two every couple minutes? Not a horde.”

“What about Adi?” Maggie asked them. “You were pissed at her for vigil-blocking everyone. Then she hurt you, Zeke. I saw your nose bleed.”

It was Zeke’s turn to look at her like she’d grown a head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Lill, tell him.” Perhaps he’d been in too much pain to apprehend that Adi had attacked him. Maggie turned to the other woman. “You threatened Adi.”

“Why would I do that?” Lill asked, bemused. “Adi had us on lockdown. We were afraid Karen couldn’t control her conduit. It was a safety measure, and it didn’t hurt anyone.”

“It didn’t sound like it was part of the plan to me.” She hadn’t imagined their shock and outrage. Adi had placed the vigil-block without it being agreed on. Why didn’t Lill remember what had happened to Zeke?

“Since you weren’t actually part of the plan, you wouldn’t know all the details,” Zeke snapped.

“Right. I missed the part of the plan where Adi was going to give you a nosebleed,” she snapped right back at him.

“What is wrong with you?” Zeke asked. “That never happened.”

Though she felt like a mulish toddler, Maggie objected. “It did too.”

Lill studied her with a concerned frown. “Are you feeling all right, Maggie?”

“It’s obvious she’s not.” Zeke rounded on her. “I can’t believe you tranced in and endangered yourself like that. You knew you caused the code one yesterday. You knew you might drop your shield and manifest again if you entered the trance sphere. But you did anyway. You almost got everyone killed, and now we’ve lost six more good people.”

“I didn’t cause either code one,” she protested, taken aback by his vehemence. She’d discussed this at length with Zeke—in bed, no less. Was he criticizing her for Lill’s benefit or did he mean it? How could he be angry about something he knew she hadn’t done? “I saw Adi hurt you mentally. You collapsed. Lill cussed her out.”

“Hon, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but Zeke didn’t get hurt and I’ve never cussed Adi in my life.” Lill inspected Maggie as if seeing her for the first time—and not appreciating her at all. “Cussed in front of her, but at her? Who would cuss at Adi?”