Hunted Dreams (27 page)

Cor’s grin faded immediately. “What the hell was that?” she muttered.

Reed shook his head. “Nothing good.”

Scratching, ticking sounds in the dark. A menacing crowd hurling threats and insults. A faceless person with swords for arms. A barbecue joint serving plates of well-seasoned human flesh. Katana endured each of the horrors her dreams threw at her—more, she reacted to them with aplomb. She approached new dreams tiredly, with some resignation, and found the horrors increasingly trite, overdone, scary but not petrifying. Not that she ever giggled her way through them or found the kind of peace she did with Reed, but gone were her soul-deep pain and terror.

She’d told Reed her dreams had changed, become less and less scary. In fact, she realized they remained equally dreadful.

She
had changed.

Had it come on gradually and she hadn’t had the time to understand and process it? Might Reed’s disappearance, when she thought she had lost the most important thing in her world, have rendered other horrors toothless? Lying there after his death, she’d had a long time to think, to reevaluate, to put her experiences into perspective. Or perhaps remembering more and more about her life had stolen the sting from some of the poorly disguised symbols?

Whatever the causes, she found herself less distracted by the dangers, the threats of each dream. Katana spent less dreamtime reacting and more time . . . practicing.

As long as she could remain focused, she found she could alter the world around her in minute ways. At least, she started very small: changing the color of her outfits, the placement of a small object, transforming a passing rat into a ferret.

She had just finished making the room circular instead of rectangular when she suddenly fell to the floor . . . and found herself kneeling in the dark room with the red pool.

“No,” she ground out, and concentrated on leaving the scene for . . . the park in which she and Reed had made love. Her surroundings wavered, flickered. Tender grass blades tickled her palms. She smelled the nutmeg scent of fresh earth.

Katana closed her eyes, inhaled the scents, and opened eyes to the darkened bedroom.

“But I’ve changed.” Her voice leaked out in a soft hiss.

The sound of footsteps sent her sprawling on her bottom. Her breaths as ragged as her heartbeat, she scooted over the broken glass to press herself against the wall beneath the window.

Reed, Mina at his side, glided through the house like a menacing spirit, invading closets, tapping walls, even checking behind a painting or two. Where had they hidden her?

As had become his habit, he envisioned a giant safe in his brain in which he stashed his frustration and fears. Just as he could feel Katana’s fear, so could Quina, Mari, and the others sense his less sanguine emotions. He’d spent a lifetime trying to tamp down his feelings and half a lifetime avoiding others’; it took almost no effort to tuck it all away.

Throughout his search, he kept imagining Mari’s huge brown eyes, sparkling with laughter and life as she stared at him throughout dinner. Her teeth had flashed whitely, her skin shone as if lit from within, her hair swarmed in glossy waves over her shoulder. She’d smelled spicy, sweet, a promise of delicate and unbreakable femininity.

He imagined her as some kind of carnivorous plant—the sweet pitcher plant, maybe. This beautiful, sweet-smelling plant used its sugar scent and blood-red petals to seduce, trap, and then devour their living prey. With every honeyed smile, rosy-cheeked glance, and chiming laugh, she assured him she was still watching him, still waiting patiently for their next encounter.

Chapter 14

It smelled like a sour, stagnant pond. Katana placed a hand over her nose and took a tentative step. Below her, the spongy ground gave with a squishing sound and warm water swirled around her ankles. She was grateful her clothing in this dream included a pair of shoes.

A liquid light churned through the light red, glistening ceiling above. She could barely see the pale rocks that jutted from the nearby wall and scattered in a ring across the floor. Behind her, darkness loomed, while interlocked stalagmites and stalactites blocked her way forward.

The only way forward was back.
All right, then
. She took a few steps toward the darkness and felt the terrain shift very slightly, sloping subtly upward while growing rougher underfoot.

When a hand appeared from the darkness before her, she gasped and hopped backward. A moment later, she strode forward and grabbed it.

“Reed?” she asked briskly.

“Why can’t you ever meet me at a carnival or a perfumery?” he grumbled, but she saw his grin when he stepped toward her.

No longer aware of the dull, vinegary scent of their surroundings, she dragged him forward and into her embrace. He smelled fresh, clean, and . . .

“Delicious,” she muttered against his chest.

“Hmmm,” he agreed.

She raised her face to him, and he met her in the middle. They kissed fiercely, lips enacting a frenzied dance of longing and desperation. His breath, so warm and alive, even as a symbol in this imaginary place, sizzled across her lips and into her mouth. In spite of the fetid, gloomy surroundings, Katana felt her breathing go slightly ragged. She kissed him as if she could gobble him up, keep him with her forever.

A few minutes later, they drew away from one another and pressed their foreheads together. “I don’t like your symbolism dreams where we don’t get to touch,” he murmured.

“Stupid brain,” she agreed, smiling. “And yet, in spite of how good it all feels right now, we’ve never actually touched.”

“Minor details,” he said, an inch from her lips.

She kissed his lips again, quickly, before pulling back. “How are you?” she asked.

“You’re imprisoned in your beautiful head, and you’re wondering how I am?”

She smiled very slightly and wished, somewhat absently, that she could grow used to the heavy, humid air coating her skin and the inside of her nose. “I worry about you, playing James Bond with the Leeches.”

He grinned, shaking his head at her. “Only you,” he said. “I’m fine. Don’t you worry a second.”

She pursed her lips at him. “I’m stuck in a never-ending horror movie, not stupid. I know you’re worried and upset. Are the Leeches being decent to you? Is”—her lip curled—“Professor Daleth treating you okay?”

“They’re all fine. I think they’re up to no good, planning something big and bad. I’m meeting Jade tomorrow morning to fill her in. After that, it’s the Clan’s business, not mine. I only have one priority.”

She smiled at him and rubbed her hand along his arm. “What are they planning?”

Briefly, colorlessly, he laid out his suspicions surrounding the forthcoming Broschi fundraising party.

“I like Cor,” she mused after he’d finished.

“Yeah, me, too,” he said.

She playfully narrowed her eyes at him. “You better tell that hussy to keep her paws off my man,” she vamped, more because she thought it would amuse him to have someone feel possessively about him.

Sure enough, he laughed. “Girl, she’d be way more interested in pawing you than me,” he said.

She grinned at him. “So you found a sorta-kinda ally. That’s good news. Any chance she’ll want to defect with you when you leave?”

He sighed. “Not much,” he said, and she could see he’d spent a great deal of time pondering the question. He didn’t come by friends easily or often.

“You send her here,” she said gently, teasingly. “I’ll convince her for you.”

“You’re very persuasive,” he agreed.

“Do you think the Leeches are going to kidnap the rich peeps and turn them into the ‘batteries’ Cor mentioned?”

He shrugged. “I’ve wondered about that. Why would they do that, when these rich folks are so high-profile? And when so many other people know about this fundraiser? It’s got to be something else, something the damn Psychics can’t see.”

“Hmmm. Maybe they’re planning to hurt them in some way? If some tragedy befalls the attendees, oops, how sad, big news, lavish funerals, lots of public grief, yummy slurp time.”

Reed stared over her shoulder, toward the front of the cave. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I just know the Clan should find a way to be there.” He looked down at her again. “Then again, not my biggest concern.” He glanced over her shoulder again.

“What are you looking at?” Katana asked, glancing over her shoulder. Their surroundings were as dank—and rank—as ever.

“Right before I went to sleep, I was thinking about pitcher plants,” he told her.

She raised her eyebrows in confusion.

“Carnivorous plants. They trap and eat bugs.”

“You thinking of getting a big one to take care of all the bad Leeches?” she teased.

He smiled slightly. “I was thinking it might be the inspiration for this dream.”

“What do you mean?” She looked around, trying to find evidence of Venus flytraps or other menacing plants. In fact, no greenery existed anywhere in sight.

“Where do you think we are?”

“A smelly cave with creepy boulders and a . . .” Her voice trailed off. She glanced upward once again at the undulating curvature of the cavernous ceiling. To her left, the boulders sat too neatly, resulting in a Stonehenge-like formation. Below her, the damp, squishy cave floor . . .

“Oh, god,” she groaned. “This is so gross.”

Reed chuckled, and she glared at him. “Don’t go all boy on me now and think disgusting equals cool,” she warned.

“I’m wondering how this dream is going to end.”

Katana peered around him, at the gaping darkness. “Swallowed whole?” she asked, and shuddered. “I’d rather fall on my sword.”

“Think this is another symbol dream?”

“If so and you inspired it, your brain is way creepier than mine.”

“Says the woman who’s had me drowned, obliterated, squished, and kidnapped by a giant bird creature.”

“I never drowned you,” she muttered, a little abashed.

“Close enough,” he grumbled, and kissed her again. Then, he pointed ahead. “Want to examine the teeth?”

The expression she gave him made him laugh, but he tugged her toward one of the “walls” where the boulder-teeth met in the middle. Each step squished under their feet. Now that she knew where they were, Katana found the damp sounds slightly nauseating. She swallowed several times as they made the brief journey over the jagged terrain.

Up close, each tooth jutted, as pale as the moon, several feet over their heads. Her metaphor of standing stones had been pretty apt, except these structures glistened with a fine sheen of liquid and interlocked with other “stones” from above.

“Is this a human mouth?” she asked, lips peeled away from her own teeth.

Reed nodded. “I think so. I’m no dentist, but the number of teeth is right, and I think human teeth are smaller and flatter than other primates’.”

She turned more fully to him. “They teach these things in Psychic school?”

He flashed her a brief, smug?, glance. “What, just because I’m a landscaper, you think I never took some college courses? Intro to Archaeology was pretty interesting.”

“You surprise me every day,” she said, smiling. “College? No. Landscaping? Who’d a thunk? And by the way, I think that settles our discussion about who inspired this dream. I don’t know a human’s mouth from a porcupine’s.”

He grinned back at her.

They squelched their way toward the front of the mouth, where the teeth became flatter and narrower.

“I’m going to try to wake up,” she mentioned as they approached what Reed called the incisors.

Reed stopped and stared down at her intently. “From this dream?” he asked seriously, and she didn’t think she was flattering herself to imagine the tiniest expression of hurt in his otherwise flat tone.

She smacked him on the lips. “You deserve it for making my mind create something so . . .
blech
. . . but no. Your visits are the only bright spots I have. I’d never cut them short by a second. I mean wake up for good.”

His face remained tense, unrelieved. After a moment, he said, “You’ve tried a thousand times.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But I’m almost ready now. The Leeches aren’t getting much out of me anymore. They won’t keep me around for long. And besides, I don’t find this horror show as horrifying as I used to. I’m more aware, gaining more control. I feel like I can wake up soon.”

Reed shook his head. “I don’t know,” he mused. “I want you awake, but what if you wake up and they . . . I think maybe you should wait for me to find you.”

“And awaken me with a kiss, Prince Charming?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

“With fists for anyone guarding you,” he growled. Slowly, reluctantly, he said, “If Quina had meant for you to survive this, she wouldn’t have chosen someone who knows her.”

She looked away. “I can’t just wait,” she said quietly. “What’s the purpose of becoming stronger if I just end up lying in wait of rescue?”

Reed put his arms around her waist and kissed the top of her head. “You’ve become stronger so you can survive all this. This isn’t a fairy tale, honey. It’s the ugly reality of bloodless vampires without a conscience.”

Not all of them
, she thought.
This situation is much more nuanced than even you give it credit for
.

And also, he was wrong.

Minutes later, they were rather forcefully reminded that mouths have other purposes than moving food to the esophagus. Her last moments of the dream included shouts, the glint of her sword in the gloom, and an ever-increasing vision of a descending molar.

The following morning, Reed met Jade for breakfast in some upscale café in the Silverlake District. Over omelets, Reed filled her in on Quina’s odd and sudden changes. She promised to check with the Psychics and make sure the Clan monitored the event.

“How goes the hunt for sword woman?” Jade asked over a forkful of egg.

“Miserably.”

“I chatted with Henri, with Gabe, and especially with Julian.” She wriggled her eyebrows. “Although ‘talking’ might be a bit of an understatement.”

Reed stared at her.

“Anyway, none of them can get a fix on your honey bunch. Julian thought your involvement as a kinda-Psychic with weird dream-invading powers might be screwing everybody up. You know how Psychics’ visions of other Psychics tend to cross wires and get all wonky.” Jade tossed down another glassful of orange juice. Like Leeches, Hunters—and Psychics, to a lesser degree—had a higher metabolism than humans, which meant running hotter and requiring larger quantities of food.

Damn. The one time the Clan could actually help him. . .

“So if I leave the house, will they be able to find her?” he asked.

Jade shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe you befouled her with your psychic mojo. How should I know? It’s all speculation, anyway.”

“Befouled?”

“Hey, you’re the one doing the befouling.” She grinned at him. “And by the way, if Julian’s theory is true—and believe me, he is quite, um, articulate—that means you really are part Psychic, too.”

For perhaps the dozenth time since she’d said it, Reed recalled Katana’s words about the Clan throwing him away because his psychic talents were slightly different than the other boys’. Echoing his thoughts from a couple of weeks prior, he responded, “I got a pretty good idea of the heritage I shoulder.”

Dreams passed her by, almost without her noticing. Katana stared sightlessly before her, only vaguely aware of sounds and movements. She could do it. She could wake up from these nightmares. Reed would eventually find her—she didn’t doubt him for a moment. She also knew the Leeches would be noticing her, well, lack of terror, and wouldn’t keep her around much longer. She needed to expedite her rescue.

And honestly, she’d suffered through countless horrors, relived the most painful childhood memories, lived through the pain and confusion of not knowing who she was. She was a tough person—a life on the streets had made her cautious and street-smart —but there was a profound difference in fighting for survival and battling with one’s own internal demons. She felt refined, honed, sharpened to a fighting point. Waiting for someone, even as precious as Reed, to bear the entire responsibility of her escape, made her feel powerless and pointless. More, it felt wrong. As she’d told Reed, she’d come to this impasse because she’d grown stronger, more empowered. How ironic to waste her newfound insight and . . . solidness . . . on inaction!

So she would wake up on her own. After that, she’d find some way of attracting Reed’s attention.

She knew she’d be weak, perhaps even temporarily helpless. How long had she been trapped in this world? Weeks at least, perhaps even months. Her material body must be lying motionless somewhere, strapped helplessly to IVs while her muscles deteriorated.

That
was horrifying. She needed to wake up, the sooner the better, and do what small amount she could to keep herself safe.

She focused hard on waking up.

Waking up.

Wake up.

Wake up.

The world shimmered.

Wake up!

The scenery grew dark. Moonlight gleamed off a dull red pool.