Dreamwalker (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Cauquemere returned from the tactile world to the palace in a foul mood. He'd gleaned little of value from Prosperidad during her interrogation at Island Cabs. She either didn't know where Pete Holm was or was determined not to share her knowledge. He was inclined to believe the latter. He'd left the questioning in Tiny and Stoner's capable hands and returned to Twin Moon City. There was much to do here. He'd return with a special dream for Prosperidad. Her nightmare would make torture a relief. She'd crack in no time.

He entered the Hall of Dreamwalkers. Completed orbs spun in lazy circles over the creators' expressionless faces as they materialized new additions. Cauquemere stood close to the table, behind Estella, and began sorting through the floating nightmares, looking for one tailored for Prosperidad.

An odd sensation went through him, the same feeling as last time he was in this room, a sense of something out of place. No, it was more like things out of
phase
, moving in the wrong direction, like one fish in the school going upstream, or one goose in the flock flying north in the winter.

He tapped into the current of energy flowing into the palace.

The incoming streams maintained some distinction as they joined in the overall flow, like hundreds of wires braided into one. Cauquemere pulled at them one by one, checking for an outbound energy stream, and discarding each as it felt identical to the last. One stream backed away as he approached it, swirling back behind the anonymous others, becoming noticeable by trying to be inconspicuous. Cauquemere's mind dove between the pulsing strands and grabbed the one in hiding.

At last! The energy here flowed out, not in. And this stream didn't have the dull sluggish pulse of the city captives. This power had the disciplined regular beat he felt from only one source.

A dreamwalker.

He mentally grabbed the energy stream and pulled hard. From the seat on front of him, Estella screamed.

The other dreamwalkers froze, faces impassive, automatons placed on pause. Estella's nails dug into the arm rests of her chair.

Cauquemere pounced. From behind her, one hand swooped down around her throat and squeezed. Her head banged against the seatback. He combed the fingers of his other hand through her hair and pulled it back behind her ear. He bent closer. His dreadlocks brushed her face.

“Estella,” he whispered. “What have you been hiding?”

His left hand grabbed her forehead and he forced his consciousness through hers, like a net through the ocean. The seine caught up flashes of thoughts. One minnow tried to escape. He caught it.

“Little Sister!” he said in triumph. “The elusive bitch who arrived uninvited to my city.
You've
been hiding her from me.” He gripped her neck tighter until his fingernails drew blood. “Of course you'd keep her from me. You know the fun I'll have at her expense.”

“No,” Estella whimpered.

“Don't worry,” Cauquemere said. He released his grip on her throat. “You'll have a front row seat. I love a touching reunion.” He licked her warm blood from his fingertips.

Without Estella's protection, Rayna's life force stood out like a flare in the night sky. Cauquemere's thoughts sent a squadron of gunner Jeeps to converge on her location.

Cauquemere straightened his cap. Checkmate in two moves. Tiny was working over Prosperidad, Pete's protector in the corporeal world. In moments, he would have Rayna, Pete's Twin Moon City contact, at bay. Alone and unaware of his power, the boy was doomed in both worlds.

An evil smile crept across Cauquemere's lips as an even more delicious idea presented itself. Why annihilate the boy? This table in the Hall of Dreamwalkers could seat five quite nicely. Cauquemere's empire would expand far faster, especially with Rayna as leverage over
two
dreamwalkers.

He vanished from the palace and reappeared in the front hallway of a shell-shocked apartment building in Twin Moon City. The battered husk of a drugstore stood across the street. Inside shone the bright little soul light he was about to extinguish.

“It won't be easy,” Rayna said. “And I guarantee it won't end well.”

“Nothing about this place will end well,” said Tod Washington.

He sat on the floor beside Rayna against the battered prescription counter. What was left of his golf shirt and khakis were little more than rags, though he hadn't been here long. He still carried himself with the strength he had when running the Harlem Renaissance Bank in the tactile world. “At least I'll finish this on my terms with some self-respect.”

Rayna put a hand on his shoulder and smiled. He was her third. She pointed down to a map she'd drawn on the back of a dirty Valentine's Day card from the rack on Aisle Two.

“You'll wait here,” she said. She pointed to one of the blocks in the simple diagram. “I'll have weapons stored in the basement. Hold off until the explosion draws the hunters. The rest is up to you.”

Tod nodded in assent.

“Payback is a bitch,” he said. “I'll go down taking a few bastards with me.”

The scream of a gunner Jeep filled the air outside the drugstore.

“We'd better move,” Rayna said. “You first.”

Tod gave her a firm handshake, stood, and ran to the shop's back door. He opened it and immediately slammed it closed. He dropped to the floor.

A fusillade of gunfire turned the wall into splinters. One-inch holes opened up in the metal door. Machine gun rounds rearranged the store's debris.

“Goddamn it!” Tod yelled.

The building had no side exits. The front door was their only hope. Rayna cursed herself for not scouting a better location. She ran up the aisle. Tod dashed in a crouching run to the front of the store.

As he touched the front door, the blinding lights of a parked gunner Jeep halted the two fugitives in place. The wild laughter of rabid hunters flitted in through the missing windows. There had to be a dozen of them, their numbers hidden behind the spotlight's glare. She and Tod scrambled backward until pinned against a ragged, empty display for Valentine's candy.

The front door flew open and three hunters strode in, weapons at the ready. Combat and decay had reduced these long-timers to near skeletons. Unidentifiable unctuous rags draped their bodies. Their eyes burned bright and unrestrained within the shadows of their backlit heads. They bayed like hyenas at a kill. The three positioned themselves across the front of the store.

The one opposite Tod raised his machine gun and opened fire. He walked a stream of bullets from the floor and up between Tod's legs. The rounds disintegrated a vertical strip of his body from crotch to neck. Flesh, organs and bone fragments sprayed Rayna's side. She screamed. The remnants of Tod's body hit the floor with a wet thud, two separate halves.

She looked at his severed body in shock. Then she stared the hunters down and waited for her end to come.

Instead, a shadow entered the store behind the hunters. Rayna's first wild, irrational hope was of Pete coming to the rescue. Then she saw the outline of the peaked officer's cap and the flowing duster coat.

“Little Sister Rayna,” Cauquemere said as his face came out of the shadows. “We finally meet. Awful manners of you to enjoy my hospitality uninvited. That will cost you. How nice that your sister gave you up.”

Rayna's jaw dropped. “She'd never do that.”

“Oh, yes she would,” Cauquemere said, “and did. Sold you out to save some old boyfriend I haunted. We both thought it an excellent trade.”

Rayna didn't believe it. Estella would never…but then how else would Cauquemere know she was Estella's sister?

“Now, dear,” Cauquemere said. “Where might I find
your
boyfriend, Pete?”

Rayna's fortitude began a slow collapse. He knew about Pete. Estella betrayed her.

She said nothing. However badly this was going, she wouldn't betray Pete.

“No matter,” he said. “Cooperation isn't really necessary.”

Two hunters moved forward and bracketed Rayna. With the muzzles of their weapons, they pushed her to within a foot of Cauquemere. It felt like standing face to face with a starved wolf. His breath smelled like a crypt. She fought to hold her fear in check.

Cauquemere reached up and held his hand over her forehead. An orb like a big soap bubble formed in his outstretched fingers.

Rayna felt someone, or something, sweep across her mind, like a breeze raising ripples on a lake as it blew in. The wave extracted all her memories, flipped them over and shoved them back in place. The succession was as quick as a chill going up her spine. Everything she knew had just been downloaded. She felt raped.

Cauquemere pulled the orb closer and studied it. Inside she saw quick images of herself and Pete. Talking on the office rooftop by the palace. Running the mirror through the city. Pete describing the attack. It was the whole rescue plan.

Cauquemere cupped her chin in his free hand, still holding the orb aloft. He gave her a look of false concern.

“Rifles and bombs and magic mirrors,” he said. “How steeped in the tactile world. An intricate plan that will go nowhere.” He squeezed the orb in his hand. It popped with the sound of breaking glass and the fragments vanished. “As we speak, a team is turning that mirror into a thousand pieces of nothing. See how quickly I erase what you work so hard to complete?”

Everything within Rayna sagged. Cauquemere raised his hand to her forehead again and drew out another orb. Another wave of memory rifling coursed through her mind.

“I see Pete is not her. Still on the other side.” He looked deeper into the orb. “But something else
is
here. Something Pete gave you…”

Rayna's eyes widened. It would be all over of he discovered…

“The key,” he announced.

He took his hand from her chin and held it outstretched. The key in Rayna's rear pocket slid free and flew into Cauquemere's palm. The golden key glittered in the Jeep's bright spotlights. It spun one revolution and then pointed to Cauquemere's right.

“Well, this will be easy to follow,” he said. “Your sister betrays you, now you betray Pete. What a family.”

Cauquemere folded his fingers around the key. Rayna's heart dropped into a void of infinite despair.

“Take her to the palace,” Cauquemere said to the hunters on his left. “Lock her somewhere safe.” He turned to the remaining hunter. “You, get the rest of your squad and follow me. We're making a house call.”

The hunters cackled. Their skeleton jaws clacked back and forth. Cauquemere left the building with one hunter in tow. The other two forced Rayna to the door with the barrels of their machine guns. The one to her right kicked Rod's remains out of the way.

The bright glare of the Jeep headlights blinded her and she stumbled. She didn't care what happened next. She envied the peace Tod Washington had found.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The new day was hours old by the time Pete finally fell asleep on Prosperidad's couch. When his dream kicked in, he sat on a large, flat rock beside a stream in a gorge in Ithaca. Clear, cold water rushed by and air conditioned the humid summer air. The steep gorge walls soared over a hundred feet high and displayed the layers of rock in clear relief. Towering pines fringed the top of the gorge, and the overhead sun washed the floor in daylight. It was the perfect place to sit and talk. He thought Rayna would love it.

Time passed and Rayna didn't arrive. She invariably showed up soon after a dream began, never fashionably late. Pete started to worry, then blamed paranoia. He had no way to measure time in this world. Sometimes hours of dreams took only moments, sometimes the reverse. He needed to calm down. Rayna would arrive.

He paced the stream bank. No, something was wrong. He could feel it. He'd have to find her, and there was only one place to start looking. He was physically and emotionally spent. He wasn't up for the rollercoaster ride that always awaited in Twin Moon City. But he'd have to be.

Pete forced himself awake.

With a start, he was back on the couch in Prosperidad's. The house was still dark and quiet. He wondered what time it was. He closed his eyes, focused on the mansion, and drifted back to sleep.

When the world again came into focus, he caught his breath. Complete devastation surrounded him.

He stood on the wooden floor of the mansion's main entrance, the only portion still intact. The roof and main walls were reduced to smoldering studs. The main staircase rose only three steps high, with just sad remnants curving up beyond, splintered and broken against the gray sky. The overpowering, thick smell of charcoal and sulfur made his eyes water.

Profound loss gripped Pete. The mansion had always been with him, growing as he did, a constant in the shifting world of dreams he visited every night. A cousin, no, a brother, was gone.

Pete stepped over to where the sunroom had been. The tile floor remained but the plants were blackened stubs, as if raked with a flamethrower. His favorite room in his favorite house, incinerated. He wondered if anything survived.

The weapons!

Pete hopped the partial walls of the mansion to the trap door.

He barely recognized what lay there, a twisted pile of melted steel and plastic. M-16 barrels pointed out of the heap at crazy angles. Liquefied hand guards and butt stocks dripped over the mass like drizzled chocolate syrup. The stockpile looked microwaved. The explosive timer was nowhere to be found, probably used to destroy his own mansion. Then it got worse.

On the top of the slagheap of weapons rested Rayna's gold key.

He sank down to the charred floorboards. There was only one person who'd use this as a calling card. Cauquemere.

In a panic, Pete tried to focus and recreate the rifles. He closed his eyes and visualized them, creating a vivid, detailed picture in his mind of a row of shining weaponry. He forced that image into the house, to let the mansion give birth to his vision.

But the image sailed out into space. There was nothing to catch it. Cauquemere's violation of the place had destroyed the magic within.

Pete stumbled back to the mansion foyer. He sat down in a daze on the lower step of staircase's remnants. Everything was gone. St. Croix had taken Prosperidad. Cauquemere captured Rayna. His mansion and his plans to rescue Estella lay in ruins. He had no place to go. A visit to Twin Moon City promised a hunter welcome committee. Too much time on the streets in Atlantic City would get him an adjoining room with Prosperidad.

Game over.