Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 (10 page)

Something in her tone…“Killed?”

“Yes. To get away. I will again if I have to.”

Again, Rook inhaled to sense Murs. He concentrated on the heavy air in his hands, the burned-toast scent in his nose, and listened intently to the trumpeting soundtrack of the Jurassic Rêve to hear behind it, for a voice, a whisper, anything. But he felt only Jordan.

“How did you meet Chuck?” he asked to buy time.

“I answered a recruitment ad online, one of those ‘Dare to Dream’ things with a short questionnaire about your experience in Rêves.”

Rook knew those kinds of ads were scams. He could still name most of the reps who placed them. The sex-oriented ones were the worst; the black market Rêves they fed into made mush of young minds.

“I must have answered something right because they sent me euros to pay my way to London, where I met someone for a formal evaluation. By then I was already running with David, and I was relying on the promise of a job, which Chuck offered me. I didn’t have a choice but to take it. The waking world is hard with a kid, but Darkside is worse.” She faced him. “You mentioned that my kind doesn’t have a dreamscape. Every night, to protect him, I have to
find
him in the dreamwaters or pray that no one or nothing else does. Four nights ago, my father got to him first.” Those gray eyes narrowed. “How do you know so much about us anyway?”

Rook shrugged. Didn’t see any harm in telling her. “A friend of mine is like you.”

She raised a hand as if to point back to Jordan’s Rêve.

“No, not them.” Though he was surprised she didn’t know that herself. “Someone else. He’s a good guy, works Darkside. Well respected by everyone. Lately, he’s been getting serious about a girl.” Rook hoped Mirren got the message—she could have a normal life if she wanted it. Coll proved that.

Mirren made a derisive sound. “Wait until she discovers what he is.”

“Oh, she knows what he is and complains more about any boring tendencies he might have.” Rook suddenly smiled. Maybe Maisie did that on purpose to make sure Steve knew she didn’t care about the other stuff. Like how Jordan—
still
there in his mind—had said she’d always wanted to visit New York, as if they were partly on a vacation to sightsee. She never complained about running.

“If they have children,” Mirren said, “there will never be peace in their lives.”

“I’ll bet that’s true for anyone. Do you have any idea what your father wants with David?”

“He wants to control me. Wants me to use my talent for the greater good.”

Greater good.
Ha. Lambert’s a funny guy.
“Then why don’t you? Help us bring him down.”

Mirren’s gaze wandered away. “He has my son, and when we get David back, who’s to stop my father from simply finding David lost in the waters again and taking him?”

“Not friends like Chuck.”

“Friends like you?”

Rook shook his head, and he spoke the truth because she’d know the difference anyway. “I’m not your friend, either.” Friends he trusted, and he definitely didn’t trust her.

The waters carried her dismay to him. Well, it was her own damn fault, and now she knew it.

Suddenly the warmth and sensory hits that were Jordan
were gone, replaced with a cold vacuum. She must’ve awakened.

He sought out Murs again, and almost immediately found him close, with one intermediate Rêve between them.

“I’ve got him again. We go quietly,” Rook told Mirren. “We don’t want him to get word anyone is crossing.”

He opted for the Rêve within which he sensed two revelers, heads close together. But when he and Mirren crossed, they found not an interlude but a private discussion. One of the men, TJ, was known to Rook and should’ve been in a prison Rêve to confine his Darkside movements. Clearly, he’d busted out.
Problem.

“Just passing though,” Rook said.

“No, you’re not,” TJ spat, rising, then he yelled as gold sand sprayed upward from the floor.

Rook rushed for the boundary and crossed once again, this time into a half-realized construct with a mottled atmosphere surrounding a scuffed work area. Mirren followed. Like a small pyre, there stood Alec Murs. He was at work crushing a male reveler’s body, breaking it down into a lump of flesh, deaf to the man’s cries. Rook had heard about this before—Maisie and Coll had encountered it—and the reveler was being packaged for delivery to the creatures of the Scrape like takeout.

“That’s him,” Rook said with a nod.

Murs was lifting a smile. “Well, if it isn’t the little princess.”

Mirren smiled back. Scrape sand was covering Murs’s feet, trapping him in place and spiraling up his legs. “Hello, Alec.”

***

Hope blossomed in Mirren’s heart, and it was sharp, like a glass star spun from her melted sand. Alec Murs. Yes,
he
would know where her father had taken her son, even if she had to break his head open and pick out the location herself.

“This is as far as I can take you,” Rook said. “Get him to help you find David, and let me go.”

She swung her gaze to Rook, who’d taken a backward step.
No.
She raised snakes of sand to hold
everyone
where they were—including the poor man who’d already been so abused. She couldn’t afford a mistake now that she was so close. David was depending on her to do this right.

She was collecting chess pieces to play against her father. The others, like Chuck, had been merely pawns, but Rook had led her to a bishop. Alec had been the gremlin in her father’s shadow for as long as she could remember. When she was a child, he’d even put her to bed once when her father had been visiting the home where she’d grown up. Back then she’d been naive enough to think her home was her father’s, as well, but it was just an elaborate, beautiful box in the country where he’d imprisoned her. Tutors came to
her
. Meals, too. She’d been cut and polished like a jewel, and every once in a while her father would come back to inspect her.

It was Darkside where she’d roamed, concealing herself as she spied into dreams. Darkside, where she was free.

“Let me go, Mirren.” Rook fought his against his bonds, judgment in his eyes. He was not her friend, he’d said. In that bedroom Rêve, the one with the big gold bed, she’d watched him find his sweetheart.
I found you! No, I found you!

She’d been in love like that once. David’s father—he was dead now. She’d trusted him. They’d made plans, whispering together, wrapped around each other, but he’d been too scared of her father to go through with those plans. And her father didn’t have patience for cowards.

“I can’t let you go,” she said. He
had
to understand that. He was too valuable.

Alec notched his chin in Rook’s direction. “Your father will be pleased.”

Mirren flexed her fingers, and the sand pulled Alec to his knees. This wasn’t about Rook; this was about David.

“Do you know where my father holds David?” Alec had better not lie.

“In fact I do.” Alec smiled as if he were comfortable on his knees. Maybe he was. That’s exactly where her father said humanity would be. “David is safe in the Agora.”

He was telling the truth.

“It’s been too long,” Mirren said. Four days. “He needs to wake. Does my father
want
him to die? His own blood?”

“When you were a small child, how long do you think your father kept
you
under, acclimating to your native world? Do you think you’d be able to do the things you can if he hadn’t? Your father is in the business of raising up an era of gods. You and your son are among them.”

No. Her father didn’t care about David. If he did, he wouldn’t have taken him from her. He cared about controlling
her
, bringing
her
back, forcing them both to live under his thumb. For her father, there was only one god.

But argument would accomplish nothing.

“I want my son, and you are going to take me to him.” She didn’t know the Agora. She’d only been to the Complex managed by the EU, which was like the Agora but each Rêve there had its own security, not a Big Brother watching over them all.

“My dear, I know which Rêve he’s in and I have the codes to access it from the waking world, but I can’t get inside the Agora from the Scrape without help.” He smiled and looked at Rook again. “But might I point out, you have a former Chimera agent right next to you. And he
does
have the ability to cross Rêves at will.”

“Won’t work,” Rook said. “Even if I took you both inside the Agora, the minute I enter, Chimera will know I’m there.”

“You don’t have a choice.” She knew he thought she was just like her father—
I’m not your friend, either
—but she wasn’t like him. She believed in love. She’d found it herself, though not in that weak, stupid man who’d gotten her pregnant and then, even with a loaded weapon in his hand, had sniveled for forgiveness from her father. She loved David, absolutely and unreservedly. And that love surging through her
proved
she was not her father.

Rook scowled at her. “With Chimera bearing down, our chances of success grow slimmer. Do you know if the Agora’s safeties will let you use your trick with the sand?”

She nodded. “Yes. I can manipulate sand anywhere.” She didn’t tell him that the effect was localized. It wouldn’t help against a crowd.

Rook laughed bitterly. “Fine. But you should know that you’re in so far over your head, you have no idea what you’re doing. Your father has you running in circles.”

Yes, maybe, but she couldn’t think of any other way. She’d tried to get away, but she had nowhere to go. Rook
had
his people—they’d all come to his aid in the bedroom dream and he’d only been missing a day. There was only David on her side, and he was three years old.

“My father is my problem,” she said. “Finding David is yours.”

“Fine. My last word of advice, and believe me, I’ve been down roads dark enough to give it—find another way to survive without forcing people to do what you want and without taking these insane chances, and soon. Even if we get your son back, nothing is going to change for you. You can’t win.”

She fought tears. Probably not. But she had to try. And whether he liked it or not, Rook was going to help her.

***

Jordan woke from Darren’s Rêve with a skull-splitting headache and a kernel of hope—Malcolm was alive, and for the moment, he was well. Plus, he loved her.
Love.
The
L
-word. It was so early in their relationship that she never would’ve believed it possible—she was too grounded to fall so fast—and yet, she had. And she was going to fight like hell to keep flying. Turned out she’d had wings all along.

She to turned her head slowly—despite the pain zinging through her head—to look over at Vince, who reclined next to her. His Rêve crown was askew above a stressed white face, so she knew his head wasn’t feeling all that great, either. At this rate, he was going to end up back in the hospital.

Darren bent over her. “You owe me another two grand for the fourth and fifth people in my Rêve. Must’ve been some kind of party.”

His equipment had to have told him how many dreamers he’d hosted: herself, Vince, Fawkes, Malcolm, and the woman who’d abducted him,
Mirren
. Jordan had another name for the woman. Started with a
B
, ended with an
itch
. In the past week or so, Jordan had learned to fight, and she bet she could scratch that itch if she had to, as well.

“Did you at least wash the sheets before you woke?” Darren asked.

Hilarious. Jordan pushed him out of the way so she could concentrate on collecting all the pieces of the dream before they dissolved in her memory. One of those pretty purple dream journals they sold everywhere these days would be handy right now. This she knew: Malcolm was alive and well and tracking Mirren’s son, who’d been kidnapped Darkside by Lambert. Mirren wasn’t above a little abduction herself. Like father, like daughter.

Not for one second did Jordan believe that Mirren would simply let Malcolm go, even if she’d promised. Even if she’d meant it at the time. Jordan wasn’t taking any chances with Lambert’s daughter. Her methods were crooked, which meant she was, too. Now that Harlen Fawkes was involved—and soon, Steve Coll and Maisie—they could coordinate to make sure Malcolm was safely released—the reveler part of him, as well as his body, wherever he was in the waking world. Mirren would keep her promise, whether she wanted to or not.

To that end, Jordan made herself sit up in spite of the pounding of her brain. “Vince? Are you okay?”

“I will be.” His voice was rough, but he managed to get himself upright, too. He reached around to his back pocket and drew out his wallet to pay Darren for the five people who’d visited the bedroom Rêve.

“You guys want to book some more time?” Darren asked, counting the hundred-dollar bills. “I’m filling up, so you might want to pay ahead.”

Jordan glanced at Vince, who delicately, as if not to rattle his marbles, shook his head no. She agreed they needed to find a better setup. This one had been barely survivable. “I have to talk to my friends first. I’ll call you when I know anything.”

“Rates might go up.” Darren’s sales pitch went a little weak as Vince stood, the knowledge he carried from the Rêve making his expression just as severe and dangerous as it had been when Malcolm and Fawkes had pulled him off Mirren.