Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 (31 page)

“My guess is the healing was a lie and Karen used it to trick Adi—part of her plot to get us to do what she wanted.”
Zeke inspected Maggie’s arm, not seeing any unnatural bends or protruding bones. He wanted to kiss and comfort her, but Lill shuffled from foot to foot.
“Doesn’t look like a break, but it may not appear the same in the sphere as it does in the terra firma.”

“Come on, lovebirds,”
Lill said.
“Let’s get the geocoordinates to Adi before Karen can reposition herself. The doctor can see to Maggie.”

They came out of the sphere with a mutual gasp. Lill sat bolt upright on her cot, and Zeke fumbled for his weapons.

Maggie woke groggy, not as used to the transition as Zeke and Lill. Her wrist throbbed. A guard, a soldier whose name Maggie had forgotten, stood over them.

“Where’s Adi?” Lill said. “We have the coordinates.”

“We’ve had additional manifestations, ma’am,” the soldier responded. “Ms. Sharma—everyone—is fighting them off, trying to keep them out of the bunker.”

Zeke and Lill rolled off their cots. Maggie stumbled to her feet too, imitating their battle readiness. She needed a sling or an ace bandage. Every move jolted her wrist.

“You’ve done well,” the curator said, though whether he was addressing the two soldiers in the room or Maggie’s group, she didn’t know. He waved from the sofa in the corner, guarded by the other soldier. Everyone else was gone.

Things were so bad Adi had left only two soldiers—two dusty soldiers—to guard the curator and the alucinators tasked with finding Karen?

Correction. Five dusty soldiers. Maggie’s horrified gaze fell on three uniformed bodies against the back wall. She didn’t, however, see any physical wraith corpses, so killing them inside the sphere must not be enough to drag them over. She wished fervently she were better trained with weapons or had been able to kill more in the sphere. Out here, she was pathetic.

“Do you know where Adi is specifically?” Lill asked the soldier. “We don’t have much time. I need to duck into the sphere with her when she vigil-blocks Karen in case we have to geolocate her again. Karen can’t travel far, but she could still travel.”

“Just head for the surface and listen for the wraith screams,” one of the soldiers said. “Ms. Sharma will be at the center of them.”

“Don’t get yourselves killed.” After a quick salute, Lill headed out of the room at a trot that escalated to a dead run as soon as she hit the hallway.

“It’s a shame the doctor won’t let me help in the sphere,” the curator said crankily. “Getting old is a terrible fate.”

Maggie turned to the curator. He looked vastly improved after his episode. The old man still hadn’t donned a protective vest, though there was one on the floor beside him. “How are you feeling, sir?”

“I’m rather invigorated by all the activity.” The curator no longer had his feet elevated. “I sent the doctor to the surface to tend the wounded.”

“Where are the reinforcements from the coma station?” Zeke buckled on the few armaments he’d removed for their trance session and helped Maggie into her vest. It wasn’t really her size, chafing in spots and tight across her breasts. But it might save her life, so she’d embrace it.

“They suffered casualties. The remaining force hasn’t arrived.” The soldier, grim-faced, offered no details. None were necessary. The bodies against the wall told the whole story.

The vests hadn’t saved their lives.

Maggie swallowed, hard.

“What about retreating?” Zeke checked the bodies, impatience bristling from him like throwing stars. “How many vehicles do we have? A car can outpace most varieties of wraith.”

“No functional vehicles. The wraiths destroyed them.”

“Karen controls the wraiths. We confirmed that much.” Zeke locked the door behind Lill. “If they destroyed the vehicles, it was under her orders. Maggie, how’s the arm?”

She didn’t think it was important enough to worry about right now but answered anyway. “There’s no blood. I can wiggle my fingers. I assume it’s not broken.” It just hurt like crazy. “Don’t worry about me.”

He smiled at her. “I’d high five you, but—”

Red crackled in the center of the room, interrupting him. The soldiers immediately placed themselves between the opening conduit and the curator.

“It’s been five whole minutes since the last in-room manifestation,” the curator commented. “I’d thought perhaps the young lady had run out of steam.”

“Please remain in the corner, sir.” The slightly dustier soldier, who seemed to be in charge, brandished a sword as a wraith took shape in the center of the conduit. Before Maggie could tell what was going to coalesce, the soldier swung the blade.

He lopped tentacles off a wraith variety Maggie had never seen before. Some kind of octopus crossed with a… Hell, she was a cultural geographer, not a biologist. She didn’t know what the crap it was.

“Damn,” the soldier cursed. “That looked like a head.”

More octopus-headed things materialized. Zeke advanced as well, chopping and stabbing. Maggie knew she’d be in the way if she waded into the fray in such a confined space, so she hustled to the curator’s side and pulled out her gun. She offered it to the old man.

“You’re so thoughtful. I have one already.” He patted the semi-automatic on the sofa beside him. “I’m not sure bullets do much good on this type. They’re rare. So many neonati can’t imagine anything beyond vampires and zombies these days. I miss a good Cthulhu.” His animated, wrinkled features watched the melee in the center of the room as if it were a movie.

Keeping one eye on the Cthulhu battle and trying not to wail, Maggie still managed to gape at the curator. How could he be so callous when his people, his employees, had died during this code one? The evidence lay lifeless against the wall.

He noticed her stare. “Margaret, my dear, when you’ve seen as many alucinators come and go as I have, you’ll learn that remaining analytical amidst chaos is sometimes the only thing that will keep you sane.”

She forced herself to nod, not sure she could ever be casual while her lover was fighting mutant bipedal octopi twenty feet from her position. She reminded herself, repeatedly, that Zeke was skilled in combat and had survived many battles, including Harrisburg. How did this compare?

Better yet, how could she help? She could switch her gun for the semi-automatic since the curator didn’t seem interested in using it. Then again, her handgun wouldn’t endanger Zeke and the soldiers from friendly fire. As much.

She gripped the pistol, palm sweating, finger on the trigger, safety off. “I feel I should warn you. Karen intends to kill you too, sir.”

“Does she indeed? Interesting.” The curator wrapped a gnarled hand around the stock of his gun, so perhaps he wasn’t as unruffled as he wanted Maggie to believe. Was his calmness an act for everyone’s benefit? “She’s gotten closer than any other assassins I can recall.”

People tried to assassinate curators? Maggie had no idea why, but then again, there were probably zealots who thought the world would be a better place if Cthulhu took over.

A wraith escaped the human combatants and headed for Maggie and the curator. She shot it in the torso. It kept coming. Its lower half was that of a slimy, warty primate, with flailing tentacles erupting around its oblong head. Two protruding eyes on each side of the head rolled independently of one another—and right now, all four were focused on Maggie and the curator.

No doubt under Karen’s orders.

The monster seemed to be restricted to zombie speed, thank God. Its tentacles whipped madly, like a storm-tossed tree. It plodded in their direction with absolute determination.

She aimed more carefully, bracing her hand against her forearm and ignoring the discomfort in her wrist. This time she shot out one of the bulbous eyes. It shrieked.

Ha.
She was getting better with a gun. She could shoot the eye out of a Cthulhu at ten paces.

The curator winced at the extended shriek of the monster and hunched his shoulders toward his ears. “Put that beast out of its misery.”

While she didn’t particularly care if a wraith were miserable, she wasn’t sure if she could comply with bullets alone.

It was now eight paces away. Oh, hell. She had a dagger but couldn’t use both hands. She fired the rest of the clip, to little effect.

Where was its neck? What should she stab?

A pained curse from one of the soldiers nearly distracted her. She edged sideways, to give herself space, and the Cthulhu adjusted its course.

If the creature’s main objective was killing her, she could lead it away from the curator. By running. She’d be the bait, and he’d be safe.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she told the old man. She switched from gun to dagger. The short blade didn’t look like it would have much effect on the Cthulhu’s neck-free upper area. “I’m not a great fighter.”

“We don’t all have to be. It’s all right, Margaret. You’re still valuable.”

She hoped he was alive to tell everyone she was valuable at the end of today. Her heart thudding, she scrambled along the wall, jumping over cots, clumsily flinging a metal chair toward the lumbering beast.

Its tentacles curled toward her before its body followed. It bludgeoned a cot in its path with huge, long arms like overgrown vines. Her diversion seemed to be working.

She made it to the door. Opened it carefully. A human body lay in the dusty hallway. Red emergency lighting gleamed in the ceiling. Suffocating wraith stench billowed into the room, and the doorway to the restroom had been torn off its hinges. She spotted colossal reptilian feet at the end of the corridor, most of the way up the stairs.

Not a soldier.

The whole outpost must be infested, and Lill had dashed headlong into that mess. Did that mean everyone upstairs was dead? Were they alone? Or had the reptile manifested inside?

She risked a glance at the curator—unguarded but unharmed in the corner. Then she located Zeke. He lopped a tentacle off his opponent. His sword was minus half its length. At his back, a soldier lunged forward to stab a Cthulhu in the mouth. Maggie counted seven monsters total, including hers.

“Over here,” Maggie called.

Three Cthulhu pivoted slowly. Their tentacles twisted like seaweed in a current. They headed toward the open door. Toward Maggie.

Her original pursuer had nearly reached her.

Taking a deep breath, she scuttled into the hallway and in the opposite direction of whatever creature was blundering down the stairs.

The problem was, the hallway ended soon. If there was an escape tunnel, nobody had shared its location with her.

Chapter Twenty-One

Zeke hewed the last tentacle off the wraith so he could hack through its neck area without it grabbing his blade. He’d encountered Cthulhu before and knew how to take them down. At the same time, he tried to keep watch on Maggie and the curator.

So he saw when she ducked out of the room with several monsters on her heels. As he paused to yell at her, a Cthulhu managed to flail his arm with a tentacle.

Numbness crept through his limb. Fuck. That one had eight or nine tentacles left, and each one contained a dose of paralysis.

Paralysis in the presence of wraiths meant death.

Before he dealt with Baldie, he hewed off the tentacles of the one that had stung him. Barbered the creature with his good arm. The numbness in his bad arm would fade faster the more he joggled it.

The two bald, furious wraiths lumbered toward him. Their beaky mouths chittered and clacked. He waited until one of the mouths was open, evaded the lash of an arm, and stabbed his sword deep into the Cthulhu’s gullet.

Their warty skin had dulled the blade. Judiciously, he bore up through the monster’s neck and face, using his body as ballast. It gurgled and keened. Bones inside the thing, somewhere, halted his progress, so he toppled the creature and came at it from another direction.

In a few more seconds, he’d thrust the sword out the side of the Cthulhu’s body, which had the same effect as chopping off its head. It blasted him with gritty dust when it died.

The other bald Cthulhu crowed like a demented rooster. Its body quivered as it tried to paralyze him with nonexistent tendrils. Sure as hell disproved Karen’s claims that wraiths possessed intelligence. It bent over him where he crouched on the ground, beak clacking ferociously.

He stabbed into its mouth but pushed too hard. His blade broke off halfway.
Damn!
He didn’t have time to fetch another. He kicked the Cthulhu in the head, hard, and bounced to his feet.

The two soldiers could handle the rest and protect the curator, who hadn’t bothered to lift a finger from what Zeke had seen. Wouldn’t even put on his damn vest. Was the old guy so decrepit he couldn’t shoot a gun or support body armor? Did he feel that terrible after his heart episode?

Well, to hell with him. Zeke cared more about Maggie than some old geezer who couldn’t be bothered to protect himself. He hauled ass out of the room, on the heels of the wraiths hunting Maggie.

In the hall, he crashed into a gods-be-damned T-Rex.

Where the hell had this fucker come from?

The dino roared. Its tiny arms clawed the air. The giant head, which scraped the ten foot ceiling, dipped toward Zeke.

He dodged. Man, he hated these guys. Talk about thick necks. A broken sword and one functioning arm weren’t going to suffice. The narrowness of the corridor should slow it down. A T-Rex wasn’t smart, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a threat.

At least Maggie had run in the direction of the armory.

Zeke stabbed the jagged blade as hard as he could through the monster’s clawed foot and set off after Maggie and the Cthulhu. He prayed he wouldn’t be too late. He prayed he wasn’t making her situation worse, since he did, after all, have an angry T-Rex on his heels. He prayed the armory wasn’t empty, because all he had left were throwing stars, daggers, a razor wire garrote, and a pistol.

The garrote, incidentally, was mostly useless until his left arm regained its functionality.

As he ran, he shrugged his shoulder to flip his bad arm up and down. Tingles stabbed his fingers. Good sign. The T-Rex’s roar chased him, growing fainter as he outpaced it. About fifty feet of hallway remained until a split.

Zeke slowed, jogging in place. One fork was dark and led to the bunks and an emergency exit he doubted Maggie knew about.

The other? To the armory. Where he could see Cthulhu flaying the sealed door.

Zeke sprinted toward the three tentacled bastards. Maggie must be inside. Smart girl. Thank God, or thank Adi, that she’d been given the security codes for the outbunker doors. The T-Rex bellowed again, bashing into walls as it thundered in pursuit.

Now Zeke had to figure out how to get inside the armory without trailing any monsters with him. Inside, he could reassess, depending on the weapons he found.

And he could make sure Maggie was all right.

“Maggie!” He shot the pistol into the terrible threesome indiscriminately. The bullets wouldn’t do much to them, but one pinged into the metal door, as planned. “I need in.”

She might not hear him yell, but she’d hear the gunshots.

She might also hear the T-Rex. The bastard was short, comparatively, so it was making better than time Zeke had expected along the tight hallway. He hopped to the other side of the Cthulhu, who paid him little notice, as the T-Rex rounded the sharp bend in the corridor.

The dinosaur, sighting its prey, threw back its head and thrashed its stubby arms. It ripped out a stuttering roar that to Zeke sounded a lot like maniacal laughter.

His gun ran out of bullets. Rather than try to reload with one hand while a T-Rex hurtled toward him, he flung the pistol itself at the Cthulhu.

Shit. If Maggie didn’t open that door, he had nowhere to go but dead.

The T-Rex charged forward. Its head thudded against the ceiling, knocking it into a wall. The ground shook with its approach. It stumbled but barely slowed. Bouncing from wall to ceiling to wall, it galloped toward Zeke with murder in its tiny yellow eyes.

He didn’t have much longer.

“Maggie!” Zeke couldn’t approach fully-tentacled Cthulhu. They could paralyze every part of him that wasn’t covered by vest and boots. He withdrew a throwing star and pitched it off the top of the door. The shriek of abused metal echoed through the hall, a lovely counterpoint to the noisy dino. A Cthulhu howled when the throwing star ricocheted into its head.

That gave him an idea. He positioned himself as close to the Cthulhu as he could without entering tentacle range. They noticed of him, finally, and their many eyeballs rolled in his direction. Two of the three lumbered toward him.

The T-Rex lumbered more violently. It was nearly upon them. Zeke unsheathed a dagger and lured the Cthulhu into the middle of the hallway.

Right before the T-Rex struck, it roared. The smaller wraiths’ tentacles flailed wildly. Zeke ran as fast as he could as the T-Rex barreled into the Cthulhu.

The tangle of monsters slewed down the concrete hall. Shrieks and roars chased Zeke. Wraiths rarely fought each other, but these wouldn’t be able to help it. At least, that was the plan.

He reached the end of the hallway. No doors, no windows. Just a block wall. He whipped around to see the wraiths fighting. The Cthulhu stung the T-Rex over and over with their tentacles, and the T-Rex bit one in half.

Score. But would it work? No time for tests. Zeke, grazing as close to the wall as he could, vaulted over the mound of reptile and tentacle beast. He landed on the T-Rex’s haunch. The massive head swung toward him, snapping at him as if he were a fly. He was already chugging toward the armory and the last Cthulhu.

Right before he plunged into the wraith dagger-first, the door popped open. Its motion bludgeoned the Cthulhu aside.

Maggie’s terrified face was the most welcome sight in the world.

“This sucks!” she yelled.

He bolted into the room. She shoved into him bodily, not to hug him but to do-si-do him sideways.

Out of reach of the Cthulhu in the armory with her.

The wraith seemed to be missing a few tentacles. Maggie brandished a sword in the hand not hampered by her sprained wrist.

Right—he and she were both gimps. Luckily, Zeke’s good arm was damn good. He accepted the sword from Maggie and made short work of the last wraith.

The last wraith in the room with them.

For now.

Panting, they stared at one another.

“Your arm’s not working,” she observed. “Is it broken?”

“Frozen. Their tentacles paralyze.” He lifted the deadened limb with his opposite hand and shook it. A burning sensation crept through his flesh. “They gotta get you in a lot of places to stop your whole body, though.”

“And that other thing? The roar?”

“T-Rex.”

“Really?” She pressed her face against the small glass window in the door. “Where?”

Something slammed into the door. Maggie screamed and fell on her ass. The wall juddered like an earthquake. The safety glass crunched.

The T-Rex’s yellow eyeball peered through the tiny hole at them.

“It’s right there.” Zeke helped her up, careful to brush off the glass crumbles. The monster’s head wove past the door. First they saw an eyeball. Then some sharp white teeth.

The monster pounded the door. The thick metal barrier groaned on its hinges.

Well, hell. There wasn’t supposed to be a T-Rex in the outbunker.

Most wraiths couldn’t foil the reinforced steel doors with which the Somnium built as many of its locations as possible. Security panels and locks thwarted the ones that could manipulate knobs, and the rest couldn’t bash through the thick walls.

An exception was the T-Rex, so hallways tended to be narrow. To keep T-Rexes out.

Just their luck, this T-Rex was a runt. A runt still big enough to chomp them in half, with its oversized head and vicious teeth. The vests wouldn’t protect them from a dino bite.

Actually, it wasn’t their luck. It was Karen’s luck. He had no idea how the curators would react to Karen’s unforeseen abilities, but it didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was getting himself, Maggie and hopefully everyone else through. Getting them through undamaged was already a lost cause, but alive would be acceptable.

The T-Rex continued to assault the door. Zeke flipped open cabinet after cabinet, gathering the remaining weapon stash. Several swords and daggers, no guns, no grenades, no explosives. Crap. Explosives were the best way to deal with T-Rexes, the biggest known wraiths to manifest. While they weren’t full-sized dinosaurs, they did appear in the nightmares of a few neonati, with good reason.

Maggie anxiously nibbled a fingernail. After setting her up with another sword, he slid one into a sheath and kept one in his hand. This time he’d have a spare.

After a particularly vigorous dino bashing, the security door squealed. Dust poofed around the edges as concrete disintegrated. The door itself could be steel, but the concrete might only contain metal rebar.

“So. We’re trapped.” Maggie leaned her forehead against his shoulder for a brief moment. As decorated as they were with blades and flak vests, hugging would be awkward.

Zeke gave her a quick kiss. “Look on the bright side. Since we’re both bellatorix, they’ll cart us off to the Orbis for training together.”

She grinned. “I kinda like the curator. He’s feisty.”

“It should be an interesting couple of months.” The conversation was meaningless, but meant almost everything. They were in a lethal bind. While Zeke had killed T-Rexes before, he’d never dusted one without his team.

Maggie was smart and determined, but she couldn’t take the place of an entire team of trained alucinators.

The T-Rex, meanwhile, clawed and roared at the door as if his worst enemy were inside, which Zeke supposed Maggie was to Karen. God. He should have killed Karen when he’d had the chance. He shouldn’t have hesitated, too cowardly to murder another human.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he told her. This wasn’t fair to Maggie, that Karen was fixated on her. “It’s my fault.”

She gazed up at him with complete trust—trust she shouldn’t have. It was possible they were about to die, and no brilliant escape plans occurred to Zeke.

“It’s not your fault at all. You didn’t conjure dinosaurs. Nothing you did to Karen and nothing you could have done about Karen would have changed who she is. She’s a serial killer with a split personality, Zeke. This was going to happen sooner or later. No matter who her mentor was. No matter what her mentor did.”

“Harrisburg,” Zeke insisted. Maggie’s words were balm, but he knew what he’d done. “My screw up. I should have noticed she was unstable.”

“She hid it from everyone. Who would have expected she could control wraiths? I didn’t hear the curators describing ‘queen of wraiths’ as a little-known handicap like conduit blindness. In fact, Adi, the curator and everyone else continued to deny wraith control was possible until the evidence was too obvious to ignore.”

It wasn’t that simple, though he wished it could be. “But I slept with her and—”

She bumped him with her elbow. “Shut up, Zeke. You slept with me too, and by God, that wasn’t a mistake.”

The corner of his mouth curled into an involuntary smile. “That’s different.”

“I should hope so.” She flinched when the metal door bowed in with the dinosaur’s next assault. Zeke glanced around the room, seeking inspiration. The T-Rex could tear into any of the armament cabinets. No use hiding in those. Under tables, also useless.

Dammit. He should recommend to the Somnium’s architectural department that all main rooms have escape hatches—hatches that were too small for T-Rexes.

“Karen’s not your fault,” Maggie insisted. “We’ll talk about this later. When we’re hanging out at the Orbis, learning to bellatoricize, eating French food, and drinking Italian wine. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe.”

Not him, but he’d gladly go to be near Maggie. “Do you miss being normal?”

“Don’t ask me that when there’s a dinosaur trying to eat me.” She rubbed dust from her face onto her sleeve. The wall jolted again and again as the T-Rex sought its prey. “Can that thing get into this room?”

“I don’t know.” The armory ceiling was no higher than the hallway, so the dino’s mobility would have that limitation. Maybe they could dodge it long enough to escape. “I guess it depends on how big a hole it bashes.”

They got the answer to that question almost immediately. The dinosaur pummeled the wall one last time. Concrete buckled. The door crunched inward, along with part of the wall beside it.

The T-Rex shoved its ungainly head through the hole and roared. Maggie squinted one eye closed and hunched her shoulders. “It’s too damn loud!”