Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 (12 page)

“Are
you
going to protect me and David?” Mirren demanded. “I found you in a tiny hole in New York, living off favors from people like Chuck.” She shook her head.

That gold sand once again curled up Rook’s legs. He made to grab for the column, but he was yanked back into a straight jacket made from the stuff of dreams.

“So much power,” Rook said, “and still you’re his pawn.”

“Power comes from controlling your fate,” Murs said. “And that’s exactly what Mirren is doing. Shall I wake and fetch your father while you hold him?”

Mirren cocked her head toward Rook. “Are you sure
he’s
worth an exchange for my son, my father’s own grandchild?”

“Oh yes,” Murs said. “Absolutely.”

He didn’t notice how that assertion made Mirren’s jaw twitch, but Rook did.

Bitter pill, ain’t it, sweetheart?

***

This was it. Jordan’s heart pounded so hard that her breathing was shallow. She even held lungfuls of air extra long, to be able to hear over the bass blood-beat in her head. It’d been a few hours since Maisie’s call and was now just past midnight.

“They entered a secure Rêve belonging to Didier Lambert not fifteen minutes ago,” Fawkes said over the phone, now on speaker so Vince could listen, too. “My contact gave me both the number and the security code to enter. Chimera is waiting at the boundary for the official okay to breach, but Lambert has expressly forbidden it. Word is he’s coming in person to handle the trespassers himself.”

They had to get Malcolm out before Lambert got there.

“Do you know if there’s a child present?” she asked. Chances were good, if the Rêve was indeed Lambert’s.

“No idea without entering,” Fawkes said. “Be careful, just in case.”

“We will,” she said, although the nightmare kid was probably tougher Darkside than any of them. Jordan glanced at Vince, who’d been brooding since they’d returned. “Are we ready to go?”

Vince looked up from the console they’d been setting up for the past hour. Darren had given Vince the idea for a remote setup, and he’d gone to the SpiderSly building and had appropriated the necessary equipment, a new line just out of R&D called Shut Eye, calibrated for the Agora. The downside was that if they used this setup, there would be a record, not only that Vince had accessed the Agora without the proper permissions but that he’d descended into the secure Rêve in question. It meant he’d be openly breaking laws, the repercussions of which would suspend his company’s shared dreaming license and make him incur jail time, as well.

Jordan had halfheartedly tried to argue in favor of Darren’s brain drain, but Vince had silenced her with a sharp look.

“Jordan,” Fawkes said, “I think you should go in alone. It’d be less antagonistic for Mirren after what happened in the other Rêve.” Fawkes referred to Vince attacking Mirren. With so many variables, antagonism was the last thing they needed.

Jordan watched Vince go back to studying the screen without comment. Lambert had killed his father. There was no way he was going to hang back and miss this chance.

“We’ll be okay.” She’d push Vince into the Scrape again if he got out of control. Wouldn’t it be grand if he took the Mirren monster with him? “We got this.”

“The goal is for you all to simply wake from within the Rêve. If Chimera gets involved, that might not be possible,” Fawkes told her. “I’ll be among them to see if I can give you an out. Just in case, Coll is in position in the Scrape if you escape that way. And Maisie is waiting in Maze City. We all meet there if we get separated Darkside. Otherwise, call as soon as you can.”

The plan was everything that Jordan had hoped for during that long, endless walk around the city, when fear had dogged her every step. This was the moment.

“We’ve got to go
now
.” Vince had already settled himself into a resting position, though the expression on his face belied rest. He was ready to fight.

“Thanks, Harlen, for everything,” Jordan said.

“You’re welcome, darlin’.”

Jordan sat across from Vince in a big comfy chair, using a box for a footstool. His setup didn’t have a crown, just a curling earpiece that looked expensive. Jordan placed it in her ear and closed her eyes. The fall into sleep didn’t have the customary slide and sink—or even the normal density of the dreamwaters closing overhead—as natural sleep did. Instead, she floated as if in midair while a fine mist collected around her. Clarity came in a cool wash of light and sensation.

She stood in a kid’s playroom. It had an aeronautical theme. Small poofs of fluffy clouds slowly moved across the high ceiling where a happy sun with sunglasses grinned down at them. Malcolm was bound by thick gold roots that rose out of the grassy floor and twined around his legs, while that woman, Mirren, was shushing and bouncing a small child in her arms.

“You
said
you’d let him go,” Jordan told her.

“Get out of here, Jordan.” Malcolm was seething, his face red from exertion. “She’s reneged. Her father is coming. Run.”

But Mirren’s gaze was on Vince, who was at Jordan’s shoulder. “Please don’t hurt him,” she begged. “He’s just a child.”

The child—a little blond tyke who would’ve been cute if he weren’t also creepy—had twisted in her arms to see them, head lolling back playfully. Was he innocent? Or was he a monster inside already?

“I just want your father,” Vince told Mirren so smoothly that Jordan took a small sidestep away from him. But she was glad he’d come along and even gladder that he was on her side.

“Let Malcolm go,” Jordan said. “He got you your son. That was the deal. We can all wake up and live happily ever after.”
Sorta. Okay, not really.

Mirren shook her head. “Not if my father just comes after me and David again. But if I give him Rook, then he’ll let us go and won’t bother us.”

Jordan wanted to use her reveler’s talent to push Mirren, push her so hard that the impact would startle her into releasing Malcolm. But the kid was in her arms, squirming and twisting, fighting her to get free.

“It’s no good, Jordan,” Malcolm said. “Lambert is going to be here any second. Find the others and make a new plan.”

No. They weren’t going to let this escalate to an even more ruthless and evil adversary. The chances of success would only get slimmer. This was the moment.

“Malcolm is leaving now, with me,” Jordan said to her. “You can let him go, or I’ll make you.”

“Jordan, this is not what I want,” Malcolm said. “If Lambert gets his hands on you, he’ll have your sister, too.”

Thinking of Maisie just made Jordan even angrier.

Mirren was looking her over. “
You’ll
make me? Ha! How?”

Jordan smiled. “Vince isn’t the only one here who’s fought a nightmare before.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“The truth is in the water, sister,” Jordan said. When she pushed a nightmare, they fucking flew. “How about you put the kid down?”

“Wha— No.” She clutched him tighter.

Jordan explained in case she was stupid. “If you don’t want the kid to get hurt, put him down.”

“You wouldn’t hurt a child!”

“I wouldn’t hide behind one, either. And he’s not only a child, is he?”

Malcolm was fighting against the bonds that held him. “You have to go now, Jordan. Blackman, get her out of here!”

Jordan wasn’t compromising.

“I’ve learned not to get in Jordan’s way,” Vince said. “And don’t worry about Lambert. I’m going to kill him anyway.”

“I don’t have a
choice
,” Mirren argued, her voice pleading to Jordan. “I know it’s not fair to you people, but it’s the way it has to be.”

Jordan inclined her head. “So be it.”

***

The thick gold ribbons that had risen out of the playroom floor did nothing to restrain Vince. The stuff collapsed into grains that rained down and bounced on the floor before becoming one with it. Why Mirren’s power didn’t affect him, he didn’t know.

Jordan was trapped now though, fighting for balance as she raised an arm, presumably to strike Mirren. Vince knew Jordan could be tough, but she’d never hurt a child.

Mirren, however devious she might be, didn’t know that, and she flinched at Jordan’s feint. She put her son down and pushed him gently away from her. “Go get the airplane, baby,” she said with strained lightness. To Vince and Jordan, she begged, “Don’t hurt my son,
please
! He’s just a baby.”

Mirren was a nightmare so beautiful, so deadly—but she had a weakness. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one Vince cared to exploit. He didn’t want to hurt her anymore. He just plain wanted her.

The boy didn’t seem concerned at all. He’d passed on retrieving the airplane and was climbing the immobilized tree trunk that Rook had become.

With the child now out of the way, Jordan primed to strike.

Vince looked down at his own blackening hands, the blood of a nightmare. “I won’t harm you or your kid.” Not that way. He wanted her beneath him. Wrapped around him. “I want your father. Let Rook and Jordan go.”

Mirren backed away, looking from him to Jordan to Rook. “I…I…”

“She’s stalling,” Jordan said.

“Send her to the Scrape, honey,” Rook told her. “And then let’s get out of here.”

“My baby!” Mirren screamed. Then she blurted out, “There’s nowhere for me to go to hide from my father. He’ll find me again, but it’ll be worse. You have no idea what he’s capable—”

Mirren suddenly fell back on her ass.

Vince looked at Jordan, who was smiling. “That was a nudge,” Jordan told Mirren. “Next I’ll throw you. Let. Us. Go.”

“You have to find another way, Mirren,” Rook said. “This won’t work.”

“If I knew how, I would. But I have to think of David. You have no idea.”

Color rushed to Mirren’s face as realization hit her. She stood shaking in indecision for a moment, then tears fell fast from her eyes and her heartbreak suffused the waters. Vince could feel her anguish and determination. It matched his own distress over his fight on the Scrape, the loss of his father, and the knowledge of how he’d met his end.

The yellow ribbons holding Rook fell away from his body, and he had to catch the kid and keep his balance at the same time. Got a little fist to the face in the process.

“Take him,” Mirren said, voice clogged with feeling. “Before my father gets here.”

Jordan was suddenly stumbling forward to find her balance, too. The grains of sand disappeared into the floor.

Rook juggled the boy in his arms. “What?”

“You said to find another way. You and your sweetheart love each other. I
saw
it. I
felt
it. That kiss. And you and your friends can keep him safe. You even told me you know someone who is like me and my son, who has these eyes and can do what I can do. The one who was born without a dreamscape as a child and had wandered looking for his own.”

Vince looked over at Jordan. She hadn’t told him about anyone like that. She’d been holding out on him.

Jordan made a
yeah, well?
face at him.

“No,” Rook said, holding the child back out to Mirren. “You come with us.”

“I have to stand up to my father. I have to win our freedom
without terms
.”

Vince looked at her with approval. “We’ll kill him together.”

Mirren shuddered. “You can’t leave him here for my father to take again,” she said to Rook. “Hide him.
Please.
I’ll find you when I can.”

“I don’t know how to take care of a kid,” Rook said.

Mirren looked at Jordan. “
She
does.”

Jordan shook her head. “Uh. Nope. Have the ovaries but haven’t used them.”

“Figure it out,” Mirren snapped. “I’ve set you all free, now
go
.”

The boy called out, “
Maman
!”

Mirren turned her head away, tears still streaming down her face, refusing to answer him. “When you wake,” she said to Rook, “you’ll find David in the room next to yours. Chuck’s still there. He might try something.” She looked over at Jordan. “David has been in the waters so long. Be gentle?”

“Oh good Lord.” Jordan had dropped her arms. She’d just broken. “What’s the address of where you are in the waking world?”

“Uh, Jordan, what are you doing?” Rook sounded unsure, but he had a firm grip on the boy.

Jordan was tearing up. “Finding you and getting that kid out of danger.”

Mirren gave her the address. She was biting down hard on her lower lip, bruising it. Vince wanted to smooth it out for her.

Jordan glanced over to Rook. “I’ll catch a cab right away. Won’t be too long.” Then she looked up at Vince. “You know what you’re doing?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. Then he smiled, and with a glance at the child, asked, “Do you?”

***

David was gone, and only the madman remained. The playroom was perfect, but it didn’t smell like her baby. It was just suspended sand, conjuring wonderful things but lacking substance, and without David, it was devoid of soul. Mirren wanted to curl up in a ball and weep, but that’s not how she wanted her father to find her. How like him to keep her on tenterhooks? Well, he wouldn’t get what he wanted: not Rook and not David. He was left with his disappointing daughter. And for once, she’d face him.