Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (12 page)

She kept on looking at it,
mouth dry, eyes nearly pressed closed in a wince.

She'd already told them
everything, but they kept asking her where she'd gotten the amulet,
and she couldn't count the number of times she'd repeated she'd
picked it up for a bargain at a second-hand store.

For the moment, they'd left
her alone. She was still stuck in the room though.

She tried resolutely not to
stare too much to her right. There was a dark, black glass wall
there, and she could bet there were people standing behind it
staring her way.

If Celeste had been the kind
of girl to overreact to things, then this would be the kind of
situation to send her over the top.

Something had attacked her in
her bathroom. Something . . . she'd never seen
before outside of her nightmares.

It had been a creature, all
blue and crackling energy. She had seen a tail, and it had a
semblance of an animal form. It had the kind of quick, snapped
moves you could only associate with a consummate
predator.

She clutched a hand to her
face, closing her eyes behind it, letting her fingers trace along
her skin.

As soon as she’d seen the
monster, she'd rather stupidly and naïvely thought she'd been
dreaming. Celeste was overly fond of her dreams, and had spent more
than a few years analyzing them, and she knew the difference
between imagination and reality. Unfortunately, the table she was
now sitting in front of was quite solid and quite uncomfortably
real, as had been the monster that had attacked her.

She swallowed. She'd been
doing that far too much, buy her throat was just so dry. Though
someone had provided her with a cup of tea, she hadn't taken a
single sip of it.

In another second, the door
opened, and Celeste jumped quickly; it had startled her.

Her body was still pumped
full of adrenaline, and even the slightest noise was enough to get
her heart racing.

She tried to damp down on
her reaction though. She tried to call on those years she'd spent
overcoming her fears.

But Celeste,
you were just attacked by a monster.
She found herself thinking quickly.
A little bit of
fear is understandable.

She looked up to see a
familiar face walking into the room.

Jack. She took a heavy
breath as she watched him.

Her clothes were still wet.
When Jack had thrown her that towel, it had gone straight under the
shower head. It had become thoroughly drenched before she'd managed
to turn the water off. So she hadn't bothered trying to dry
herself, and when he'd told her to put some clothes on, she'd just
tugged them on over her wet skin.

Though her shirt and pants
were drying now, considering the heat of the night, they were still
damp, and she didn't need to look down to see that her t-shirt and
trousers had dark patches all over them.

At least it's
not your singlet.
She
thought quickly. She really didn't think she could face the
prospect of being dragged in by the army wearing nothing but a very
threadbare singlet and a small pair of shorts. Instead, she was in
some pajama bottoms and the overly large shirt she always wore to
bed, the one that had a picture of a cartoon hero emblazoned over
the front.

Celeste had her arms crossed
in front of herself protectively, and she hadn't shifted them
once.

Now that Jack was walking
into the room, she got to her feet.

He didn't talk to her, he
simply looked at the glass wall on the other side of the room. He
was standing very straight, one hand clasped around a file, the
other loose and awkward at his side. He didn't seem to be capable
of looking her in the eye, and kept on darting his gaze everywhere
else, settling a few times on what she was wearing, but then
jerking up quickly to settle on her sopping hair and then back to
the file in his hands.

‘
What's going on?’ she asked for
probably the millionth time. After she'd gotten dressed, she'd
walked down her stairs, Jack and the massive Scotsman named
McDougall in front and behind her. They'd taken her outside.
There'd been two helicopters parked on the lawn, the garden around
them trashed. There'd been bullet holes in the side of the house
and a dark patch in the grass as if something had been
burnt.

She'd lost it at that point,
but only briefly, only long enough to turn to the side sharply,
bury her head in her hands and whimper.

Jack had latched a hand on
her shoulder, pulling her back from the scene, tugging her around
the side of the house. The rest of it had been something of a blur.
She'd been loaded into a chopper and taken to the base. A doctor
had looked at her, even though she'd tried to convince everyone
that she was fine, and then, well, she'd been taken into his room.
She had lost track of how long she'd been in here now.

Jack eventually moved over
and sat heavily in the chair opposite hers. He shrugged over to her
own chair. She sat carefully and slowly.

She latched a hand onto her
neck, scratching at the skin, never taking her gaze off
him.

He brought his elbows up on
the table, clutched his hands together for a second, and then
leaned back.

He twisted around, facing
the black plate-glass window. He moved his hand around in a
circle.

What it meant, she couldn't
guess. When he saw her looking at him, he straightened up and
coughed. ‘I'm telling them they don't need to record this,’ he
explained, voice soft.

Silence stretched between
them.

It gave her a chance to
think. There was only one thing she could think of. A monster had
attacked her in her shower.

Celeste had once suffered
from horrendous nightmares, and as a kid she'd honestly believed
that monsters did walk the earth, and, most irrationally, always
coalesced under her bed or in her chest of drawers or wardrobe. As
an adult she was adamant about one fact: there was no such thing as
monsters, there were only things that you didn't understand and
that you didn't know how to deal with yet.

Jack took a heavy breath, his
shoulders shrugging in. ‘You probably have a lot of questions,’ he
conceded pushing the document that he'd placed on the table towards
her. ‘They're called the Yaoguai.’

She looked at the document, and
then back up at him. ‘What is called the Yaoguai?’

It was a stupid question to
ask, because really, there was only one thing he could be talking
about.

‘
The creature at your house,’
Jack answered gently.

Carefully Celeste brought
the documents towards her, and started sifting through them. There
were pictures, descriptions, photos, charts, even a couple of maps.
It was too much to take in, especially considering she couldn't
seem to bring together sufficient concentration to read anything.
Her mind was too edgy, too filled with anxiety and
tension.

‘
What was it doing in my house, I
mean in your house?’ she asked, voice shaking.

‘
You know that amulet you picked
up?’

‘
My $10 bargain?’ Celeste asked
through a sigh. Though the situation was incredible, and even
though she was in a bloody military base trying to debrief after
something called a Yaoguai had traipsed around her bathroom, she
was still trying her hardest to get a handle on her
emotions.

She settled into her chair,
putting all her attention into her belly and breathing into it. She
kept telling herself that no matter what had happened she had to
work with her fear and understand it.

Jack watched her, and he even
tilted his head to the side as she took another calming breath.
Maybe he was confused at the fact she wasn't screaming, or maybe he
thought that her growing calm was cause for suspicion. Celeste
quickly cleared her throat. ‘I . . . ' she
began, and she had no idea what to say next.

‘
They are a type of demon,’ Jack
said.

Celeste's lips parted, and she
could tell that her expression was one of disdain.
‘Sorry?’

He simply looked back at her,
expression entirely even. If he was pulling her leg, then he was a
fabulous actor. ‘They are a type of demon, Celeste. They,’ he
paused, looking uncomfortable, ‘absorb people.’

She carefully put down the
document that she'd just picked up. ‘They what?’

‘
They absorb people. They absorb
energy, knowledge, experiences.’

‘
Right,’ she replied, voice
falsely easy. ‘There was a demon that absorbs people in my
bathroom . . . .’

‘
It's okay, Celeste,’ Jack's
voice was very gentle.

Her lips twitched up to the side
quickly, her teeth clenched. It wasn't okay. It was something, but
it certainly wasn't okay. ‘Who are you people?’

Jack suddenly looked
uncomfortable. ‘Read that file. All we can tell you is in that
file.’

She glanced down at it, hands
crumpling in her lap. ‘Jack,’ there was a beseeching edge to her
voice, ‘what's going to happen? I mean . . . '
she trailed off again. She had to get a handle on her thoughts.
Again she tried to straighten up, she tried to push attention to
her belly, and she tried to work with her fear. So, what if her
heart was beating fast, if her mouth was dry, if her skin was slick
with sweat. They were just symptoms of her body getting ready to
fight or flee. The more she bought into those symptoms, the more
she fed them with her frantic thoughts, the more they would grow.
If she understood what they were and respected them, on the other
hand, they wouldn’t control her.

She straightened up in her
chair. ‘I know you can't tell me everything, but at least tell me
what you're going to do with me.’

Jack West

He couldn't take his eyes
off her. This entire situation reminded him of one thing only:
Annabel Farmer. The second he'd pulled up outside of Celeste's
house and his phone had warned him that a Yaoguai was around, the
same track of guilt had started to play around and around in his
mind.

Celeste Cross was not
Annabel Farmer. She was alive for one. She'd lived through the
attack. Apart from being a little bit damp and wet, she was
entirely fine. What was more, she was taking this far better than
most people would. Okay, so she looked shocked, but she appeared to
be getting a handle on herself quickly.

‘
You're safe now, you'll be fine
here,’ he assured her.

Her brow crumpled further.
‘That's not what I mean. I meant what happens to me after this.’
She shrugged awkwardly. ‘I mean what will you do with me? I assume
the Yaoguai, as you put it,’ she tried to pronounce the Chinese
word, but her lips moved awkwardly around the phrase, ‘are
something you try to keep secret. I sure as hell have never come
across them on the net or in the news.’ Though her breath was
sharp, and her words were quick, she still seemed to be keeping
control of her emotions. ‘My point is, I now know about your
secret, so what happens to me?’

It was a very careful question,
and Jack had to be very careful in his reply. ‘You're fine,’ he
repeated.

‘
That's not what I'm asking,
Jack.’

He nodded. ‘Okay, you can go
back to your normal life, but—’

‘
I can't tell anyone?’ she
supplied quickly. ‘I've seen movies like this,’ she gave an ironic
chuckle, though it wasn't a particularly happy one. ‘You're going
to monitor my communications for the rest of my life, aren't you?
The second I so much as mention one of those creatures to an old
lady at the bus stop, you're going to sweep in—’

‘
No one is going to hunt you
down, Celeste,’ he interrupted quickly. Though he emphasized his
words and tried to make them sound as genuine as he could, they
weren't entirely true. Whilst his organization did safeguard the
secret of the Yaoguai, they hardly went around assassinating
anybody who spoke about them. There was, however, an important
condition to that. While Knight were sworn to protect humanity from
the threat of the Yaoguai, there were groups out there that did the
opposite. Groups who tried to use the Yaoguai, who tried to find
ways to control the creatures. The worst institution by far was the
Shadow, a powerful organization masterminded and funded by an
unknown group. If Celeste ever tried to contact them, then Knight
would step in. If she tried to sell information to Shadow, she
would have to be stopped. Yet Jack knew she would never do
something like that.

‘
I can predict how this is going
to work. You're going to let me go, right? Assuming that if I
actually told anyone what happened to me, they would just think I'm
mad or a crazy-nut conspiracy theorist,’ she started to loosen her
grip from around her middle, one of her hands darting up as she
gesticulated. ‘But you are going to keep track of whatever I write
on the Internet and whoever I call, and if I start talking to the
wrong people, then you're going to step in?’

Her analysis wasn't that far
off, and the way she'd said it, with that calm expression on her
face, started to hammer home to Jack that Celeste really was
handling this well. He'd seen a lot of people go through exactly
what she had, including himself, and very few of them bounced back
this quickly.