Hunted Dreams (23 page)

She felt his breath and his fingers as he drew patterns on the inside of her thighs. He kissed her several times but did not proceed. She made a sound of inquiry, and he kissed her sex before replying. “I’m trying to take this all in,” he told her gently, quietly. “You are so beautiful.”

Her lower lip trembled, even though her eyes remained perfectly clear. However, a few moments later, she forgot all about crying and lips and words of validation. Reed leaned into her, and she cried out and arched her back. He used his lips and tongue to speak a wordless language of passion, and she entered a gray world where all senses beyond one disappeared or, rather, faded into insignificance. Hot, itching pleasure stretched from her core throughout her body, tensing all her muscles and clawing under her skin. She murmured, she groaned, and as he progressed, his movement growing more frenzied, she started a wordless cry of one or more vowel sounds.

The itch scraped along her belly until her body lifted with it. She groaned and clawed at the ground as the feeling dragged her upward against the pull of gravity. Her voice grew louder and higher, and she pushed against Reed, demanding he drag her all the way to the top. Finally, with a shriek, the feeling inside her snapped and a heavy, liquid warmth gushed through her. Reed kept going, even when she felt too sensitive to endure one more second, and a second wave of pleasure smashed into her.

Reed pulled away from her and she lay there, drained, senseless, weighing approximately two thousand pounds. He joined her once again, and when she kissed his moist mouth, the lassitude left her. She twisted them until they were both on their side and then pushed Reed gently to the ground. Leaning over him, she kissed his mouth and down his mostly-hairless chest to the juncture of his thighs. He was fully erect and felt firm and leathery against her hand.

Reed groaned when she cupped him and then leaned over him to deliver her own gentle kiss. Unlike him, she didn’t bother with words, had little desire to delight in the visual before her. Indeed, after a couple of seconds, she opened her mouth wide.

“Kat,” he sighed, and groaned. After a moment, he panted, “Katana.” No more than a minute later, she could feel the tension coiling in his body. “Kat, Kat,” he groaned. She did not reply.

Seconds later, he pulled away from her. “Let’s make love,” he said, his drowsy eyes sparkling in the moonlight. Without a word, Katana rose above him, threw a leg over his hips, and gently, lovingly lowered herself.

They cried out in unison, and Katana stayed there a moment, reveling in the feel of Reed inside her, where he belonged. When he started wriggling beneath her, she initiated a rocking rhythm, slow and gentle at first. Reed tugged her shoulders toward him, and she fell astride him. Still maintaining the slow rocking, she kissed him, traced his lips with her tongue, offered her neck to him for kisses and nibbles.

Soon, he was grunting and panting beneath her, grabbing her hips and moving faster. Katana rocked back upward and began a fiercer, faster pace. Reed, his eyes closed, his chin thrust at the sky as he gritted his teeth, slipped a trembling hand between them and caressed her with fluttering movements. She whimpered against him, even as he bit out her name.

Deep inside her, strands began to uncoil, spinning throughout her body, wrapping around her muscles, her organs, her bones and veins. She felt the spool spinning faster, faster, as the rest of her body grew more rigid. Sensation filled her up, spilled over, even as the threads snapped her body into a million pieces.

“I love you! I love you! I love you!” she screamed as her vision filled with white and her flesh disintegrated.

Below her, Reed grabbed her hips and held her steady while he moved quickly inside her. Within a minute, he yelled her full name and bucked beneath her before groaning his release.

And Katana burst into tears and collapsed on top of him.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Reed said gently, patting her damp hair. He kissed her forehead as she lay atop him, cheek down, watering his chest with tears that sure as hell didn’t seem happy. Had he hurt her? “You okay, honey?”

She brought a hand up and placed it against his heart. Meanwhile, her body shuddered against him. Not the post-coital reaction he’d hoped for.

Katana sobbed against him for a few minutes, and his worry deepened. Maybe things worked differently in this godforsaken place. Maybe what he’d thought of as the best sex of his life was the opposite for her. Maybe she’d felt pressured into it, even though she’d been the initiator.

He’d felt her passion, her wonder, her joy.
I love you
, she’d said. Not once, not twice. Three times. Maybe it hadn’t been so horrible after all.

I love you.

He made some nonsense noises and stroked her hair. She felt weighty, good, and very, very real as she sprawled atop him.

“You died!” she cried against his chest, and her hand spasmed against his chest.

“What? Baby, I’m not dead,” he responded automatically before logic could kick in.

“You. Died. Right. Beside. Me.” Her gasps marked each word. She made a wordless sound of grief that left him speechless.

His kissed her forehead again, ran a thumb over the tense muscles of her neck. After a few minutes, the storm of her weeping abated. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m sorry,” he crooned. “The dream lied. I’m fine. I’m here.”

She jerked against him as the sobs quieted. Reed kissed her forehead and made more soothing noises.

I love you.

Finally, she was silent. Had they existed right now in a landscape outside her very fertile imagination, they would have heard the myriad sounds that characterized the outdoors: crickets, mockingbirds, the rustle of wind through leaves. Katana’s outdoors hummed in sympathetic silence.

Minutes passed. He felt her moving against him, collecting herself. Finally, she growled at him, “If you ever die again, I’ll kill your booty.”

He smiled, even though he didn’t think she was entirely joking, and opened his mouth to promise her he wouldn’t. But he wasn’t in charge of this crazy-ass world. And in two worlds—this one and the so-called real one beyond—chock full of deception, misdirection, and falsehoods, he refused to lie to her. “I will never choose to leave you,” he promised, stroking her hair.

She hesitated for a moment, drew a breath. Then, so defiantly he wanted to squeeze the breath out of her, she snapped, “I kind of love you, you know.”

Reed grinned. “I heard that somewhere,” he teased.

“Don’t you dare say it back.”

“Isn’t that customary?” he asked her, but he didn’t care what words they used right now. Just speaking, hearing her voice and his dancing together in this dark place, felt good.

“That’s why,” she said, nodding against him. “When you say it, and you will, I want it to be because you know it, you feel it all the way into your pretty toes, not because social convention makes you.”

He thought of telling her he and social convention weren’t exactly on speaking terms, but she continued.

“And I did some thinking while you were d-dead.” His chest hurt to hear her stutter the word, even though she moved briskly onward. “I’ve decided we should be a couple. Okay, I’m trapped in some bug-induced nightmare and you’re technically a bug, but that’s okay, because you’re a good bug. A good person. Maybe the best person I’ve ever met.

“And I know you’re all invested in the loner persona, but that’s okay, too. I can be patient. I
will
get out of here, and I’ll wait for you to realize you totally love me and can’t live without me. And if you don’t get the picture, I’ll woo you.”

By this time, Reed was laughing. “How you gonna woo me?” he teased, just to hear her be fierce some more.

“Don’t you laugh at me, Reed Ayson! I know this seems like too soon, but time in here works differently. I’ve known you forever. Your thoughts have touched mine, and you and I have tramped around my subconscious. I don’t think two people can know each other’s essences any better. I know I want you, and I’ll help you see it, too. I’ll, I don’t know, buy you chocolate and pretend I like basketball and kick the Clan’s collective butt for tossing you out like garbage.”

His fierce protector. “How’d you know I’m a Lakers fan?” he asked gently, smiling and squeezing her.

“See? I know everything I need to know,” she said smugly. “And we’ll make love like horny teenagers. You won’t be able to resist me.”

Like he’d try. “I think we did pretty okay on that front,” he commented.

She raised her head from his chest and smiled at him, sweaty, tousled, and so beautiful his teeth hurt. “Not bad for dream sex, huh?” she teased.

“Worth the wait,” he agreed. “And there are some benefits to dream sex.”

She nodded. “No condoms.”

He’d been about to say something about the combination of physical and cerebral, but she had a point.

He hesitated, then, unsure.

“It was mind-blowing,” she whispered, and kissed his mouth lightly.

Wasn’t he supposed to be the empath around here?

Katana laughed at his expression and planted a smacking kiss on his chin. “Everything I need to know,” she repeated.

Chapter 12

Cor threw down her notepad. “We need to clear the air,” she announced.

Reed smiled at her in confusion.

“See, you’re doing it again, and it’s creeping me out. You’re all smiley and polite today, not like you at all. Are you sneaking out after I leave and mackin’ on some shorty? Way more importantly, does she have a single sister?”

Reed shook his head. “Girl, Black men don’t really call their women shorties. You listen to too much pop rap.”

“Bus-ted!” Cor sang out. “So smooth, how you managed not to even kinda-sorta answer my question. So you have some hottie stuffed somewhere, waiting for her daily delivery of Reed lovin’?”

He laughed at her, and she grinned back.

“She got a sister?” Cor persisted, tapping her pen against her front teeth and wriggling her eyebrows.

“We need to talk music. These rich folks aren’t gonna entertain themselves.”

“Caterer already recommended a string quartet. I’ll email them later today.
Any
way, what’s her name?”

“You get the invitations ordered?”

“Done. You get the list of recipients from Quina?”

“Right here.”

“For not being raised with your kind, you’re really good at suppressing your feelings.” Cor pointed her well-gnawed pen at him. “It’s always hard for me to tell what you’re feeling. I mean, you’re trying to distract me? Duh. But what’s really going on? I don’t know. It’s not a lesson Quina’s been teaching you, since it obviously benefits her to keep you open, but the rest of us were taught to close ourselves off.”

A gift from the Clan. Hunters and Psychics learned young how to shield themselves from Leeches. After leaving the Clan, his emotional control had become even more important to him as he learned to live with the knowledge of what he was.

“I learned a lot of discipline in the army. All those people right there—I had to try to not . . . to keep myself in check.” True, even if not the entire story.

Cor nodded. “You didn’t want to feed on them. I get you. It must be scary not to know what’s going on.”

He shrugged. He didn’t want to lie to her. “I did okay.”

She shook her head at him, disturbing not at all the spiky blue sculpture taking flight from her head. “You know, we’re not monsters, mister man.”

Not all of us
, he thought, surprising himself.

As they usually did, this one started off innocently enough. She turned a corner and found herself in a large, dim room, the periphery wreathed in oily shadows. In the center of the murky room sat a threadbare, overlarge, red-velvet chair. A light from some spotlight of the mind shone down on the chair. Nothing else was visible in the room, although the shadows writhed with movement from unseen people.

Katana hovered in the shadows, glad for once not to find herself thrust in the middle of the spotlight. Instead, she heard the shuffle of footsteps as someone in tennis shoes parted the shadows and strode toward the chair, head held high.

Reed.

She called out to him before rational thought could intervene, but her voice fell flat and the room remained unmoved. No one could hear her. And this wasn’t Reed now but Reed over half a lifetime ago. As a young teen, his stockiness had been slightly fleshier and less muscular. This version of Reed looked about her height and carried himself calmly. He was dressed in a stiff, button-up shirt and black chinos; his hair puffed up from his skull.

“Have a seat,” an androgynous voice, drifting from somewhere nearby, commanded. Reed sank into the chair and folded his hands in his lap.

A memory dream, then, although not one of hers. Somehow, she was reliving this moment from his youth.

A short, wide powerhouse of a woman strode up to the chair and clamped her hands on its back. Behind her, a girl trailed slowly, a reluctant tail to her mother’s comet, her eyes darting awkwardly. Like Reed, and unlike the woman standing proudly behind him, the girl looked mixed race, perhaps Black and White. The woman, clad in a black pantsuit, face defiantly pinched, was arresting more than beautiful, and her eyes snapped with intelligence and determination.

“Aya, there’s no need for you to accompany Reed. You and Jade may sit over there.” Presumably, the invisible speaker gestured, since the woman glanced over her left shoulder.

“You go easy on him,” the woman ordered in an amazingly rich, golden honey voice. “He’s only fourteen.”

“Be seated, please, Aya, daughter of Uma.”

Mouth pursed, Reed’s mother led Jade out of the spotlight. Reed, his eyes direct, his chin up, sat alone in the middle of the room. Silence stretched.

“Reed, son of Aya.” (Son of Aya? Aya’s son? Reed Ayson, ha!) A different voice rang out, this one smooth, masculine, and very deep. “The council has convened to determine our next course of action in dealing with the news of your . . . emergent identity.”

Katana was pretty certain she knew exactly which memory this was. This was indeed a nightmare, just not hers.

The androgynous voice spoke again. “Your mother told us her version of the . . . event. May we hear yours?”

Reed stared straight ahead, face composed. “Eight days ago,” he began in a voice that hadn’t fully transitioned into that of a man, “I was walking home with my friend, Shane. Some school bullies followed us . . .”

“He lost everything this day.” The woman’s voice came from behind Katana. She turned around and stared through the haze of shadows separating them into the eyes of Aya, Reed’s mother. She stood several inches shorter than Katana but appeared to be looking right at her.

After a moment, Aya’s broad face pursed into straight lines. “Girl, you have a hearing problem?”

“Are you talking to me?” Katana asked hesitantly.

“You see any other dreaming White girls eavesdropping on my son’s most private memory?” Aya demanded.

In the dream world, Katana had learned, all things were possible. Reed’s dead mother as her tour guide through his trauma? All in a night’s work.

“Anyway, shhh. Listen up,” Aya said, shooing away Katana’s attention.

“ . . . Shane was hurt, so I got up and walked into Nelson’s Bakery and used their phone to call Mom,” Reed concluded, his voice calm.

“And how’d you feel when you found out Shane had been hurt?” a brisk, feminine voice, the third disembodied voice Katana had heard, asked.

“Bad,” Reed said shortly.

Behind her, Aya chuckled. “Such a smart-aleck, that one. He knows what they’re after.”

“How did Shane being hurt make you feel, Reed?” This from the male speaker.

“That’s his stepfather, Gregory,” Aya said. “I never thought he’d let it go this far. It’s a goshdarn pageant.”

Reed stared hard ahead, presumably at the speaker. “Good,” he said finally. “It felt good.” His young voice wobbled just a bit, a touch of vulnerability nowhere evident in his expression. Katana didn’t need to be a Leech to taste his shame and fear.

“He’s fourteen,” she said loudly, sharply. “Back off.”

Aya placed a broad, gentle hand on her shoulder. “They can’t hear you, baby,” she soothed.

Too bad. She had a lot to say.

“How did it feel good?” Gregory, his stepfather, persisted.

Reed took a deep breath, glanced down. (
Oh, honey
, Katana thought.) “I don’t know. Just good. Kind of tickly . . . and full. Kind of like when you’re really thirsty and drink a glass of water, but everywhere in your body.”

Kind of like sex
, Katana thought uncomfortably. Aya’s hand patted her back.

After a tense silence, the androgynous voice said, “We’ve established he doesn’t smell like a Leech.”

“Yet,” the feminine voice said grimly.

What did that mean?

“Hunters can smell Leeches,” Aya said. “Keer is wrong. He never did smell like a Leech. One small consolation.”

For whom?

“Reed, son of Aya, have you ever felt this . . . good feeling before or since?”

Teenaged Reed glanced toward the two of them as they stood in the shadows.

“I’m here,” Katana whispered.

“The room wasn’t really this dark and spooky,” Aya said, removing her hand from Katana’s shoulder. Katana turned to look at this woman, separated from her by a couple of feet, four or five inches in height . . . and reality. “It was a simple council meeting in an everyday room. This is how he remembers it, though.”

Katana’s voice trembled very slightly, and not with fear. “This is disgusting. Why didn’t his stepfather protect him? Why didn’t . . .?” She stopped.

“I?” Ava nodded. “I asked myself that question a lot over the next decade. Later I wish I’d done it all different, but at the time, I thought I was balancing the needs of the Clan with those of my son.

“This is the last time Reed and Greg ever spoke. Greg raised Reed from the time he was three years old. I knew he never thought of Reed as his, never even felt totally comfortable with a half-Leech stepson. Still, I didn’t know. . .” She shook her head, and her short black curls bounced against her skull.

“What conclusions do you draw from your experience, Reed?” Gregory asked.

Once again, Katana faced the center of the room. The young man before her, already strong and smart, stayed silent for a moment before saying so quietly she could scarcely hear him, “It seems like I’m a Leech.”

“So what, you hypocrites!” Katana snarled to the room, and Aya shushed her.

“So it seems,” Gregory said.

“And what would you recommend we do with that information?” Androgynous asked.

Katana bared her teeth. Saving humans from evil, indeed.

Reed shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“He’s fourteen. He just wants a home and acceptance,” Katana muttered.

Keer spoke then, and her girlish voice had fossilized into something hard and sharp. “Aya, daughter of Uma, would you and Jade please join Reed?”

Katana glanced behind her and found Reed’s mother gone. She appeared shortly behind Reed, tugging little Jade behind her. Reed’s hands gripped the velvet arms of the chair.

“Aya, daughter of Uma,” Androgynous began in a tone so chilly it made Katana shiver. “We have determined your son, Reed, to be a Leech and an enemy of the Clan. By our rules, any Leech found within our walls forfeits her or his life . . .”

“What the hell?” Katana shouted, taking a couple of steps forward.

With a grimace, Aya turned toward her and made a sharp chopping motion.

“However, since he was unsure of the extent of his genetic heritage until very recently, we are inclined to spare him.”

How benevolent
.

“But he can’t remain here, taking advantage of our charity and resources, learning our secrets,” Keer said. “His very existence in our home mocks all we work for.”

“We banish Reed from the Clan.” Gregory’s smooth, deep voice vibrated with intensity. Perhaps even with pain. And yet: “He will pack his suitcases and leave today. He may never return here.”

Reed crushed the velvet between his fingers.

Androgynous spoke once more. “We will be watching him. If he ever reveals any information about us to anyone, human or Leech, we will revisit the gift we gave him today.”

Aya pointed a steady finger ahead as her sharp voice whipped forth. “You may call him Leech, you may even throw us out onto the streets. But, Ming, don’t you
ever
again question my son’s integrity.”

“No one is banishing you or Jade, Aya,” Gregory said quietly. Katana wished she could see his face. “Neither are we proposing to leave Reed without a place to go. Jenny Garcia has offered to take care of him for however long we wish. He’ll even go to the same school.”

Aya shook her head. “You think I’d leave my son?” She turned toward Katana, and bared her teeth in a fierce grin. “And they called
him
a monster.”

Worse, they talked around him as if he didn’t exist, as if he didn’t sit just feet before them all. They hurled horrible names and consequences at him, but Katana thought the worst part of all this was their thievery of Reed’s personhood.

“Aya, we’re asking Reed to leave this place, but it’s still your home, Jade’s home,” Keer said.

“I can’t abandon my son. If you insist on throwing him out, then you’re doing the same to the rest of my family.” Behind her, Jade’s face screwed up in a precursor of tears.

“You’re not taking my daughter,” Gregory snapped.

Sighing, Aya looked once again at Katana. “We argued for a bit, about Jade and where we would live. We finally asked Jade, and she said she wanted to stay with her daddy. Me and Reed left the mansion that day. I know you’re worried about Reed feeling silenced, so this is what I’ll leave you with.”

Reed stood up, and every voice silenced.

“We don’t recognize you as a valid speaker, Reed.” Ming said, almost gently.

“Well, I am,” he said. His hands had fisted at his sides. “I wanted to say I want my mom and sister to stay here. I’ll go. I’d
rather
go, Mom. I don’t want anything from these beings anymore.” He turned and left the pool of white light, heading back the way he’d originally come.

“Reed . . .” Gregory began.

She could no longer see him, but Reed’s young voice filled the room. “I don’t recognize you as a valid speaker,” he said.

Katana’s eyes were wet.

From fifteen feet away, Aya stared sympathetically at her. After a moment, she dropped with a sigh into the red velvet chair. Little Jade disappeared into the blackness behind her.

“I wish,” she said quietly, looking down at her hands, “I could tell you me and Reed walked out, heads high, and never looked back.”

“But you were scared of him,” Katana said.