Hunted Dreams (25 page)

“Why would we do that when a few end up coming to us on their own?” Cor asked. “Mia, Roce, Kane—and those are all within my lifetime.”

“Because they’re supersoldiers,” Jade snapped. “All the benefits of being a Hunter and a Leech with none of the troublesome conscience.”

“Oh, please,” Cor scoffed.

“Jade, tell Cor about Gabriel’s wife.”

Her face creased into an expression of perpetual disgust, Jade told Cor about Serena, a Hunter manipulated by another Crossover’s Byzantine plot into a situation where she trembled on the verge of killing an innocent life, thereby transforming into a Hunter/Leech hybrid.

“I’m not makin’ this up,” Jade concluded. “I was there, through every step. Mia ended up confessing everything to Serena, and now Serena’s fighting mad and trying to save all these sleeping Hunters from similar fates. She’s the one who thought of bringing in Reed.”

Cor was shaking her head in disbelief. “I would know about it,” she said stubbornly, squirting hot sauce from a packet onto her burrito.

“Maybe you’re not old enough for the adults to trust you with the big girl plans,” Jade sneered.

“But that doesn’t matter as much anymore,” Gabriel said. “I found out about another scheme.” He took a deep breath and delivered a sketchy version of Katana’s plight. “Finding this woman is my main concern now,” he concluded.

Cor had run her fingers through her choppy hair. “I still think the Crossover story is a bunch of BS,” she said, “but let me think about this dreaming girl.”

Reed leaned forward. “All I ask is a few more days to find her. Once I do that, I’m out of there and the Clan and Broschi can fight until everyone is dead for all I care.”

Cor sat back, crumpling the latest taco wrapper in her hand.

“You know I’m telling you the truth. You can feel my sincerity,” Reed pushed.

Cor grabbed another burrito and ate it while staring over their heads. “I will never forgive you for betraying us like this,” she said. “Feel the truth of
that
. But if you promise to find your dreamer and go, I won’t say anything.”

Reed’s eyes closed, and he sat back in the torturous plastic chair. He was briefly boneless with emotion, both sweet and bitter.

“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I couldn’t care less about the rest of them, but you . . .” He shook his head.

She met his eyes then. “Blah, blah, blah.”

Chapter 13

KATANA: A LIFE REVEALED gushed the sign. It was written in sloppy chalk letters on a display chalkboard, much like the kind one would find in a coffee shop. The sign sat three feet in front of an entryway to a nondescript, beige stone building.

She stood in front of the sign, holding an admission ticket. Unsure what to do with the stiff, lavender paper bearing the ornate words ‘Admit One,’ she placed it on the ground before the sign and stepped inside the building.

A ceiling soared over the enormous room inside, and cheap partitions cordoned it off into a maze of sorts. Red velvet ropes helped guide the paying customer, currently only her, to the mouth of the maze.

At the entrance to the maze stood herself, smiling in welcome.

Warily, Katana approached the other her. She looked exactly as she had in the mirror images she’d seen: tall, fleshy, long hair, nose stud. Except this representation wasn’t two-dimensional . . . nor did it move with her. Her avatar even wore the same outfit she did: sleeveless, button-up red top, brown clam diggers, and red flip-flops.

Katana reached out a finger to touch the motionless version of her.

“One of the odder things I’ve seen in a while.”

She spun around, already grinning. Two steps later, she was hugging Reed tightly. She felt the press of his lips against her hair.

“Hey, beautiful,” he murmured.

“I missed you,” she said.

“Yeah, me, too.”

She rested against him for a long time, listening to the soft sound of his heart, smelling the musky scent of his cologne. Cologne before bedtime? Her grin widened.

She didn’t want to, but she knew what lay ahead, so she drew away. Staring up at him, she asked quietly, “What did you find out about me?”

“What makes you think I know something?” he asked, smiling and brushing her hair back from her face.

Katana raised an eyebrow and gestured to their surroundings. “‘A life revealed’? Your subconscious and mine are tight. You’re here, my life is on display, and apparently we have visuals.”

“Yeah, I see that. What is this? Some kind of wax museum?”

They walked to the representation of her. “Spooky,” she said. “It doesn’t look wax to me.”

“Since your dream seems to know better than we do, I guess we should take the tour.” Reed grabbed her hand, and they walked forward together.

In spite of the anxiety of this tour, holding hands and walking with Reed felt good and right. They moved into the beginning of the maze, guided by velvet ropes toward an immediate left.

A few feet before them stood a frozen, life-sized tableau arranged on a shallow stage. Two adults, a woman and man, sat on a sofa. A young girl, no more than three, laughed up at her father from her perch on his knee. He held her hands and grinned down at her.

She recognized the family from the picture. “That’s Mandy,” Katana said quietly, pointing. “My dad and my mom.”

Reed put an arm around her. “His name was James Anders. Your mother’s name—”

“Molly,” Katana realized.

“Amalia,” Reed agreed. “Remember your sister’s full name?”

She nodded slowly, painfully. No wonder the dreamworld was so willing to accommodate this foray into her past. “Amanda Jean.”

Reed’s arm squeezed her tightened against him. “You okay, baby?” he asked quietly.

She nodded again, remembering them, if only a little. Her father, James, the jovial and outgoing type, friends with everyone, Mandy’s and her partner-in-crime. Her mother, Molly, the sterner one, the rock of the family, the disciplinarian. Molly had spoken with an accent, had told her, Katana, on several occasions that Americans smiled way too much. Hearing her grouse, her father had laughed.

Mandy, her baby sister.

“He took them all,” she whispered. “That night. Mom and Dad didn’t respond to Mandy because they . . . couldn’t.”

“You remember?” Reed asked softly.

She shook her head. “Not all of it. Enough to know that was the end of our family. I was ten.” She turned her head and stared grimly up at Reed. “Did they ever find him?”

Lips pursed, he shook his head very slowly. “It made the news, but they never caught him.”

She looked down at the floor, acid burning her throat. “Let’s go,” she said, and tugged him forward.

They took a left turn and, a few steps later, found themselves standing before a stern-looking, blond White woman in her forties. Arms folded, mouth compressed into a thin slit, she glared at them in exaggerated disapproval.

“My Aunt Ilsa,” Katana said. “She took me in afterward.”

“Cheery woman.”

She threw him a smile. “I don’t remember a lot, but I remember her not liking me so much. I think I was a handful.”

“You’d just experienced major trauma.”

She shrugged. Aunt Ilsa must not have
always
frowned at her, but every one of her sketchy memories included disgusted looks, sharp words, and locked doors. “She relinquished me, didn’t she?”

Next to her, Reed nodded. “She kicked you out two years after you moved in with her. For the next four years, you bounced around from institution to institution and foster home to foster home. You never stayed long.”

“‘Trouble kid,’” she said, lips quirked. She shook her head and stepped away from Aunt Ilsa. Suddenly knowing what part of the story came next, she halted.

From behind her, Reed put his hands on her shoulders. She took a deep breath, held it, and then plodded forward.

A woman and a man stood before her, frozen in a paroxysm of laughter. The woman’s head tilted back, sending her long, bleached blond hair tumbling down her back. Her mouth stretched open in a toothy laugh. Next to her, the dark-haired man’s sardonic laugh contorted the left half of his face while his eyes stared intently, feverishly down at her.

“The Kibbes, I presume,” Reed said quietly from behind her. He wrapped his arms around her middle.

She hesitated before asking, “You know about them, don’t you?”

His exhalation tickled her ear. “Yeah.”

She looked away from them. “Nobody believed me.”

“I know.”

“They put me in another home, though, and that was good. And another. But no one wanted me. I was a troublemaker.”

Reed kissed the top of her head again. He’d probably read all the reports, knew everything she was telling him.

“Everybody called me a liar. I wasn’t, though,” she almost whispered.

“You don’t lie,” Reed agreed.

“Yeah,” she said in surprise. “Yeah, you’re right. He took everything from me, but I refused to let him take the truth.”

They fell silent, and Reed stood behind her, supporting her, until she led them away from the Kibbes. “I don’t know what comes next,” she said.

They walked forward and turned right at a juncture. A few feet from them, two young men and a young woman lounged in various poses atop two single beds. One young man—more a teenaged boy, she saw—lounged on one of the beds, head propped on his arms as he stared at the ceiling. On the other bed, the young woman and man wrestled good-naturedly. The boy’s long hair had fallen partway out of his ponytail, and the girl’s arm wrapped mischievously around his shoulders, more playfully restraining than affectionate. Both grinned. 

The three people, garbed in cheap, rumpled shirts and jeans, looked so familiar. She could almost name them, remember the sounds of their voices . . .

“You ran away,” Reed said quietly. She snapped around and stared into his broad, compassionate face.

“I . . . what?”

“When you were sixteen, you ran away from a foster home and disappeared. No one knew what happened to you, where you were.”

She tilted her head at him. “Honey,” she said. “You’re wrong.”

“The reports . . .”

“I believe you, and I think I remember some of it. You’re wrong about people, though. It wasn’t that they didn’t know; it’s that no one cared.” She smiled very slightly. Turning, she pointed. “The girl’s name is Letty. She . . . I think she stuttered sometimes. That’s Ignacio—I think he’s her boyfriend. The other boy’s name . . .” She trailed off. “Tai? Taio? I don’t remember him very well. I don’t think I liked him much.”

“Did they take you in?”

Slowly, thoughtfully, she shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think—yeah. Someone else took me in, took us all in. I met these three there. We worked together, lived together, with other street kids.”

Reed took a deep breath, let it out carefully.

“They gave us a place to stay, food . . .”

“What did they make you do?” he asked carefully. Something about his tone . . .

“I didn’t do
that
kind of work,” she snapped. “I know it’s hard to believe, but once I left all those homes, my body and my fate belonged to me.”

Reed shook his head. “Good for you, but that’s not what I meant. I’ve heard of people who take in kids off the street, all unofficial, and give them work. It’s not usually the kind they declare on their taxes every year.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly, thoughtfully. “It wasn’t always legal. I don’t remember a lot. Mostly I remember spending way too much energy refusing to date or have sex with any of these boys. My body and sense of self were all I owned. I refused to end up the way everyone expected.”

He grabbed her arms, kissed her lips quickly and fiercely. “No wonder you’re so strong,” he said. “It also explains a lot about you. Including”—he smiled—“why you have the cleanest mouth I’ve heard on anyone under eighty.”

Her head jerked in surprise. “Huh. I guess you’re right. Yeah. I may have been a castoff, but I wasn’t trashy, you know? In spite of my past, I don’t think of words or sex as cheap. Sex and love should be”—she smiled at him—“gifts.”

Reed did not smile back. His only movement was clenching his jaw. “Everything about you is a gift,” he told her.

You’re the only one I’d give it to
, she thought. She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him again. “I really love you,” she said. Then, before he could respond out of obligation, she quickly asked, “How long was I off the radar?”

He threw her a knowing look. “Till you were twenty-two.”

“Six years. Wow. How old am I now?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Huh. And what have I been doing for the past four years? School, right?”

Reed extended his hand in an invitation to proceed down the path. The steel gray concrete whispered under their feet. They turned and found, a few feet away, a stern, White woman wearing an ice blue suit and gazing coolly down at them.

Katana grinned at her. “Professor Daleth!”

It was Quina sure enough, her clothing as cold and colorless as her eyes. Practically dancing in delight, Katana moved before the woman who had trapped her in an endless loop of horror.

“I
am
a student,” she gushed, still staring at a life-sized replica of the Daleth’s matriarch. “The specifics are hazy, but I remember working with her as some kind of research assistant. I like her a lot. She treats me with respect, like just some student instead of some charity case or a freak.”

She turned to him, eyes bright in a way he’d only previously seen when she interacted with him. The first happy chapter of her tragic story.

Katana smiled at him, and he stared at the pretty pink color in her cheeks. He found he couldn’t speak.

“I know she looks severe. She is uptight, but she’s pretty cool, too.” For the first time since he’d met her, she seemed as young as her twenty-six years. “Hmm. Sociology, I think. No, wait . . . psychology, right?” The moment stretched. Her smile tilted, faltered . . . faded. “What is it?” she asked him, a flatness entering her voice.

“Come here,” he rasped. She padded warily back to him, and he pulled her close for a hug. “I’m real, and I swear to you I will never intentionally hurt you,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” she replied slowly.

Feeling like an ass, hating Leeches in general and Quina Daleth in particular, he told her how she’d ended up on the research end of her assistantship.

The following day, Cor skipped their daily meeting. Feeling like a buffoonish bit player in a tragicomic play, Reed toiled outside all day long. As he so often did, he pondered lying down in the dirt for a brief nap and a visit to dreamland, but his raging metabolism ran too high for naps, in fact for lengthy sleep of any kind.

Around him, Leeches plotted, Cor seethed, and Katana did what she’d done for twenty-six long years: fought for survival. Meanwhile, Reed dug in the dirt and pampered killers’ late-blooming poinsettias.

In the deeply shadowed room, the only thing Katana could see clearly was Reed. He stood no more than fifteen feet from her, a light from nowhere shining on his dark curls, painting a circle on the white stone floor on which he stood. A fuzzier figure stood a few feet in front of him, just off to one side. She couldn’t quite make out the other person’s features. Wary, relieved, unsure whether to frown or grin, she took several steps forward . . . and watched the fuzzy figure grow larger. She stopped, confused, and the featureless figure halted also.

Katana darted forward; the figure moved closer to her and Reed moved farther into the background.

She was the figure, and she walked toward a giant mirror. Laughing at the silliness of her dream, she turned around to find him.

He wasn’t there. She saw nothing but white floor and a room too shadowed to identify wall or ceiling.