Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 (9 page)

“I arranged it,” Jordan said, repeating what she’d just told Malcolm. “I knew we’d need a place outside the Agora to meet, so I found a guy who had a setup and made a deal. Then I called Sera’s reservation number, hoping she’d give you the message.”

“That, by the way, was brilliant. Sera has decided to like you.”

“Since she pulled her weight without warning, you can tell her the feeling’s mutual.” Thank God for Sera. Jordan was going to hug her the next time she saw her. “And please let Maisie know I’m okay. Steve’s still with her?”

“Steve’s got her. They were both fine last night.”

“Fawkes,” Malcolm said. “I have to go. I’ve stayed too long already. You’ve got to watch over Jordan for me.”

“Did you say Lambert’s progeny has you?” Fawkes asked. “That psycho has kids?”

“Yeah,” Malcolm answered. “Jordan will fill you in on everything. Take care of her for me.”

“Jordan can take care of herself,” she put in. Efforts needed to be focused in Malcolm’s direction. Besides, Fawkes was in San Diego, and she was in New York City. And she would be hunting some guy named Charles Langer, as well as Lambert’s daughter.

“I don’t doubt it,” Fawkes told her with a cocky grin, “but tell me where I can find you so we can coordinate.”

“I’m staying at an apartment in Manhattan belonging to a friend of Vince’s, Paula Morse, while she’s in Spain.”

“Got it.” Fawkes jutted his chin toward Vince. “What’s his problem?”

Jordan made a worried face. “I told him about Lambert being part nightmare, and he lost it. Says he doesn’t believe me, but it seems like he believes something.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Fawkes said. “Why don’t you two go back to whatever you were going to do before I interrupted?”

Jordan’s bright joy was dimming as she obligingly stepped into Malcolm’s arms again. “Promise me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay. So much better now.”

He kissed her and lifted her off the floor again with his embrace. He was holding her so tight, and she twined her legs around him so that they might merge or become knotted like a pretzel. This was a dream, after all—anything could happen. “When will I see you again? How do I find you?”

“I’ll find you. Stay hidden. Do what I taught you.”

She nodded. Kissed him again. “I am. I’m good. Please don’t worry about me.”

“Can’t help it,” he said, speaking against her lips. “I love you.”

She tried to frown at him, but it was hard with her soul so high. “You stole my line.”

He kissed her again. “I did?”

She nodded slightly, relishing the satin on satin texture of his mouth on hers.

“Say it anyway,” he told her.

Okay.
“I loved you first.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Vince stared at the blood on his hands. It belonged to the nightmare creature he’d torn apart, and now it stained his skin. The blood was just as cold as it had been when it spilled, and he knew it was poisoning him. The violence inside him was just as savage as it had been in the Scrape, where the will to live had overcome whatever civility he’d been taught. He’d become fear—hungry, mean, and knowing.

Marshal Fawkes was speaking to him low and easy about what a fight like that does to a person.

Yes, yes. Trauma.

But Vince’s sneaking suspicion was that he was forever changed, infected, slowly turning into one of them. It was what made Jordan’s assertion that Didier Lambert was part nightmare so frightening. Because Vince felt a bit nightmarish himself.

“It’s going to take a while,” Fawkes said. “Won’t be easy. You’re safe.”

“No one is.” Vince had been trying to protect Jordan—he owed it to her—and even in her moment of happiness, a nightmare stood behind her. The nightmare had dark, alien eyes, just like the one he’d killed in the Scrape. It must’ve followed Malcolm Rook into the Rêve by casting some kind of illusion. Sneaking in. Sneaking close. Only Vince had seen through her trick so far.

“You’ll learn to feel safe again,” Fawkes said.

“She’s one of them.” Vince stared at the nightmare so Fawkes would know where to look.

Fawkes glanced toward the whispering couple, then back to him. Still couldn’t see the nightmare. “We can make a plan now. Because of you, Jordan’s going to be okay, too.”

Vince wasn’t looking at Jordan, though. He was looking
beyond
her to another woman. The nightmare was shaped like a goddess—a beauty with a body curved to incite reckless sinning. She wore an angry pout that he knew would burn his mouth. She had hair like snow and eyes as cold and fathomless as the deepest reaches of space. How like a nightmare to seduce and terrify at the same time. Both emotions cut the strings of control; Vince felt the raw heat of lust and cold poison of terror within him. He knew from experience that the creatures could take on the worst of forms to torment. What better way, now that he’d become a killer, than to make him want her, too?

Gold ribbons were snaking up from the thick fake rug and curling around Jordan’s ankles. “Jordan’s caught,” Vince said.

Fawkes looked back again, and this time he stood up. “Rook!”

“Fuck!” Rook finally spotted the nightmare and turned his back to it, shielding Jordan with his body. “Let Jordan go, Mirren!”

“Who is she?” Fawkes asked.

“Lambert’s daughter,” Rook answered. “She must’ve been following me. She’s the one who has me in the waking world. Mirren, let Jordan go
now
.”

Vince slowly stood, as well. He’d killed one nightmare; he’d kill this one, too.

The room seemed to revolve on its own, but more likely, he’d walked around the people standing in his way.

The nightmare finally looked over at Vince—those eyes, he’d never forget those eyes—and said, “Who are you?”

Nightmares didn’t talk, so Vince didn’t answer. He darted, grabbed the thing by the head, and threw her to the ground. The trick was to be quick and strong. Rip it apart before it could get its claws in you.

This nightmare wasn’t cold, which was strange. The others in the Scrape had been icy.

He straddled the thing, but something gold snaked up from the ground and pulled him back.

Damn Scrape sand. Vince shook himself free, and the grains fell in hiss and disappeared in the leopard-print rug again. He lunged forward to choke her, his hands still black with the other nightmare’s blood, but again he was restrained, this time by Fawkes and Rook at his shoulders.

“Let me go. I can kill her. Nightmares
can
die.”

“Blackman, get off her!” Rook said.

The nightmare wiggled beneath Vince. He couldn’t help getting hard. “Nightmare,” he named her through clenched teeth. “They have to be stopped.”

“She’s not like that,” Rook said. “She’s bad, but she’s not that bad.”

The creature had the temerity to bring tears to its alien eyes. “
I
am not a nightmare. I am a
person
.”

“You killed my father,” Vince said to it.

“Wasn’t her, man,” Rook said behind him. “It’s Didier Lambert you want. He’s hurt her, too.”

Jordan scoffed. “That woman abducted you. Let Vince finish what he’s started.”

Vince glanced at Jordan, whose expression had gone just about as mean as he felt. They
were
connected in more than one way.

“My father has my son,” the nightmare woman said. Vince wanted to laugh—a story to pluck the heartstrings. “I needed Mr. Rook to find him.”

“I said I’d get him back,” Rook told her while still grappling with Vince.

“But you came
here
,” the nightmare accused Rook over Vince’s shoulder.

“I had to see if Jordan was okay, Mirren,” Rook said. Vince was surprised a nightmare could have a pretty name. “Chuck kills too easily. If his people get lost in the Scrape, he thinks it’s their fault, not his. The
mess
is their bodies left behind. How could I have known for sure Jordan was all right?”

“I
told
you we didn’t harm her,” Mirren said. “The waters confirmed it. I know they did.”

“I have no idea what you’re capable of,” Rook said. “No one does.”

“I do.” Vince had stopped struggling, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t launch himself at her if he had the chance. He
wanted
to. Every iota of his being wanted to have at her.

“How about we go look for David now,” Rook said to Mirren. But he looked longingly at Jordan.

“I’ll be fine,” Jordan told him. Then to Mirren, “When he’s done will you release him?”

That perfect mouth twitched. “I don’t know.”

“Fine,” Jordan said to her, smiling. “Let Vince have her.” Jordan spoke to Rook and Fawkes now, but her gaze was locked on the nightmare.

More and more, Vince liked Jordan.

“All right,” the creature Mirren said. “If he gets me my David back, I’ll release him.”

Truth. Vince could feel it in the dreamwaters, though he didn’t believe it. Rook, Fawkes, and Jordan had to feel it, too.

“Then let’s go find him,” Rook said.

Jordan said nothing in response, just watched the nightmare with those sharp eyes. Vince
knew
what Jordan was capable of—she’d drowned him before and had left him unconscious in the middle of the street. She was not an enemy anyone wanted to make.

Rook must’ve taken Jordan’s silence for assent because he said to Fawkes, “Can you hold Blackman?”

“Yep,” Fawkes answered. Vince felt the hold on his shoulders transfer, which was ludicrous. Fawkes was still restraining
him
, while they intended to let
Mirren
go.

“You sure you want to leave Vince with Jordan?” Fawkes asked Rook.

“Vince is fine,” Jordan answered. “He’s gone out of his way to help me. I think it’s just
her
that has him upset. I feel the same way.”

Vince watched Rook kiss Jordan again, the nightmare looking on, too.

“Be good, okay?” Rook said to Jordan.

“No,” she responded, giving him a dangerous smile. “I don’t think I will.”

***

With Mirren following, Rook bounced off Viv’s Echo Rêve—he couldn’t risk bringing Mirren in there because Viv
would
send out a warning, and she’d be out for blood this time. They avoided several sex dreams to stop in the Jurassic knockoff so he could get his bearings. They stood, sweating, inside a copse of tropical fat-leafed trees while he grappled with the thought that he’d just left Jordan with Vince Blackman, aka Mr. Millions.

“Thank you for keeping that man off me,” Mirren said, waving away a giant insect. It dissolved into gold sand and fell to the ground. The kind of power she had over the sand unnerved him. Rook bet that when she went out in the Scrape, the harsh wind that perpetually blew there went still. The more he saw her control the sand, the more he concluded that maybe dreams themselves were made of it. That maybe everyone controlled the sand to some extent.

“I don’t like Vince much, either,” Rook managed to say. Mr. Millions had been a problem from day one, always after Jordan. He was supposed to have been sick, but the Vince in that hookup pad was feeling just fine. Fully recovered and then some. He’d better not look twice at Jordan, or—Rook felt a smile on his face—or
Jordan
would level him.

A goose lizard peered down from an overhead branch. They were supposed to spit venom, but the clarity of the Rêve was so bad that Rook wasn’t concerned. The revelers passing by in a jeep were screaming, though.

Rook knew he had to look for Alec Murs, but Jordan was like the sun, overwhelming his senses, even a couple Rêves away, so trying to perceive Murs was like looking for candlelight in the presence of a conflagration. She was it for him, beautiful and fierce. He might have crossed into that bedroom sex Rêve she’d arranged, but she had, in fact, done the finding that brought them back together. It was such a strange feeling to have someone meet him halfway like that.

“That man said my father killed his.” Mirren frowned, tension in her expression. She seemed too preoccupied to demand why they weren’t moving.

“Yup,” Rook answered. “Or at least your father threw his father to the creatures in the Scrape to do the deed for him. What does your father want, anyway? He’s building himself up to be this scary Sandman, but what is his endgame? Rule the world Darkside? He’s already loaded in the waking world, so I don’t get it.”

“Sandman?” Mirren asked.

“Yeah. He’s got everyone talking about him like the boogeyman.”

“My father isn’t the Sandman,” she said.

“Then who is?” Rook looked over at her. Her eyes still bothered him. Every time he looked her full in the face he felt as if he’d been caught mid-shiver. And yet, he felt a little sorry for her, too.

Mirren shook her head. “I don’t know who he is, but my father loves him more than he does his children.”

“Spare me the family drama. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“I love my son,” she said. “I’d do anything for him. I
have
done anything for him.”