Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (18 page)

As she turned from the cage,
the first thing she noted was Jack. He was right beside her, body
so rigid that he looked like a statue. His eyes were locked on the
Yaoguai, his face pale.

Then she twisted her gaze
back to the monster. She started to look beyond the appearance to
note how it was behaving. It wasn't throwing itself against the
glass, tail thrashing as its body tried to push through the cage to
get at her.

No.

It was doing exactly the
opposite.

It was pressing back against
the glass, trying to get as far away from her as it
could.

It looked like it was afraid
of her, terrified even.

Jack West

It was terrified of her. Now
it was hunching in the corner of the cage, eyes wide, limbs
shaking, head twisting to track her every move. It was whimpering,
the sound so desperate it almost made Jack sorry for it. Almost.
He'd seen those things try to tear a man in half. He knew how
dangerous they were; the scars down his back were a permanent
reminder.

In the three years he'd been
fighting them, he'd never seen them afraid. Vicious and merciless,
yes, but shaking as they huddled and whined . . .
what the hell was happening here?

He looked back at her. She
still had the same pale wash of surprise pulling down her features.
Her lips parted, a flash of teeth visible. Her cheeks were sleek,
the muscles tense.

She'd reacted with shock
when she'd first seen it; he'd been there to watch her body shake
and pull back as the thing had snapped her way. Now she was paused,
gaze transfixed, and she no longer looked stilled by
fear.

‘
What—’ she began.

The second it heard her
voice, it began to whine. It was a loud, droning, back-bristling
noise. Jack saw several of his men twitch back, their shoes
squeaking against the concrete. He didn't blame them; they'd only
ever seen these things attack.

He turned his gaze back to
her. Slowly her cheeks twitched up, pressing against her
eyes.

She looked
confused.

She went to reach out a
hand. Maybe she intended to walk over to it, brush her fingers
against the cage, and try to confirm that it was real.

He snapped out a hand and
locked it over her wrist.

More than the monster in the
corner, his sharp move made her shudder and pull back.

‘
You can't go near it,’ he
explained, voice quick.

She looked down at his hand.
He waited a moment before he let his fingers slide from her skin;
he needed her to get the message.

‘
But what is it doing?’ she
slowly twisted her head back towards the creature.

The creature now gave a
shuddering, keening cry, reacting yet again to the sound of her
voice.

The pitch of it sent a cold
wash down his back, his hands clamping into fists with a
jerk.

‘
It's okay—’ she
began.

Maybe she was trying to
reassure it, but the Yaoguai pushed into the glass wall behind it,
crackling skin arcing up in twists of smoke. It looked like a
cornered creature, every single movement projecting
fear.

Jack found himself staring,
mesmerized by the creature's fright. In three years he'd never
heard of one reacting like this.

His suspicions had been
confirmed: it was scared of her, there was no doubting that now.
The way it thrashed in the cage, the way it whimpered in terror
every time she spoke, there was only one rational
conclusion.

He darted his eyes to the
side again, staring down at her. With every growing second she
looked less and less scared, and more and more confused. He also
recognized the twist to her lips suggesting maybe that she felt
sympathy for it. There was no way that sympathy could be justified.
Yes, the creature was now reacting with fear, but that shouldn't
make her forget what they were capable of. The Yaoguais were the
single greatest risk to humanity.

A quick glance to the side, told
him something else too: the rest of his team were just as shocked
as he was. For the Yaoguai to be afraid of something
was . . . incredible news.

It was time to stop this,
Jack realized suddenly.

He took several steps in
front of Celeste, turned, and then blocked her off from the
creature. The Yaguai actually let out a whimper of relief. The
sound of it sent a prickle up along Jack's spine.

Slowly she shifted her gaze to
his eyes. ‘It wasn't meant to do that, was it?’ she asked
quietly.

The Yaoguai screamed behind
him, and his shoulders tensed and jerked with the suddenness of it.
He got control of himself and nodded her way.

Her cheeks paled and she pushed
a breath slowly through her teeth. ‘I see.’

Jack didn't. He doubted she
really did either. She couldn't possibly understand right now what
this meant for her. She was the only person in the world he’d ever
come across who could scare a Yaoguai. They had no idea why it
feared her either. There was nothing obvious or apparent about
Celeste that suggested an ancient Chinese demon would be
uncontrollably frightened of her. He had a notion that Knight
weren't going to stop until they found out exactly what was going
on though. She wasn't going to go back to Susie's house tonight,
she wasn't going to sleep in a soft, warm bed. No, she was staying
here at the base, and if Jack knew anything about Knight, he could
bet that they would demand she be taken to their headquarters up
State immediately. Once she was there . . . they
would test her until they found out what they needed. If they
didn't like what they found out, or if they figured they could find
a use for her, then Celeste Cross would never go back to her 'real'
life.

Chapter 13

Celeste Cross

She was back in her cell. It
had been barely 10 minutes after they’d closed the door on her
until someone had knocked on it. Her heart skipped, hoping it would
be Jack, but it wasn't. It was McDougall - that massive Scotsman,
with a pockmarked face, the one that looked like he could scare a
man to death.

With a rough brogue he told
her he was here to take her to Knight Headquarters on a helicopter.
When she stupidly asked if she could go back and pack some things
from her house, McDougall shook his head. The helicopter was
leaving in five minutes. Just enough time to get on board and shut
up, and certainly not enough time to go back, check the house was
fully locked, and prepare an overnight bag.

As she walked through the
halls of the base, everyone she passed stared at her again. Except
now their reaction to her was far more extreme. People actually
backed off, their gazes locked on hers, their surprise more akin to
fear than anything else.

An awful, sick, shaking
feeling took to her belly, and Celeste tried very hard not to buy
into it.

McDougall hadn't lied – he
took her all the way up to the top of the building, and then out to
a helipad. There were guards everywhere, all of them armed; it was
the Army after all. Celeste found herself casting very nervous
glances at their guns. Usually she didn't care too much about
firearms; as long as they were in the right context that was. She
wouldn't blink twice when a police officer walked past with a
handgun in his holster, and she didn't really care about the armed
soldiers they had at airports these days. However, as she glanced
at the soldiers everywhere around her, she couldn't help but feel
very nervous indeed. Because they looked very nervous. She didn't
like the prospect of fidgety men and women holding incredibly
powerful firearms.

She was rapidly loaded onto
a large helicopter. Celeste had never been one for military
history, and she wasn't such a fan of first-person-shooter video
games that she could name the various military hardware she'd seen
in them. All she knew was that the helicopter before her was large,
and a quick look at the front told her it also had
turrets.

As soon as she boarded, she
sat along one of the long benches that ran either side of the belly
of the chopper.

Before she could so much as
blink, two soldiers sat down next to her, and of course they had
guns. She found herself swallowing uncomfortably. Being in her cell
and trying to keep a hold of herself was one thing, but being
squeezed between two armed, massive, and strong-looking soldiers
while they flew around the country on a chopper was another thing
entirely.

One of the soldiers was
McDougall. She had no idea who the other one was, but he had a
thick moustache and a tapering beard. In another moment, several
other soldiers got on board, and Celeste noted that two of them
were women. One of them was dressed in army fatigues, but the other
was in black, with a black blast vest and a black holster around
her middle and sides. Celeste tried not to stare, but as soon as
she glanced up, she noted the red hair.

Hold on,
that's Miss Redhead.
She
realized in an instant. The strange tourist who had been in the
church with her. The one who had asked all of those questions about
the crypt and had taken photos of Solomon Clarke's
tombstone.

Celeste's cheeks reddened as
she snapped her head forward, away from Miss Redhead. It was too
late though, Redhead had already seen her, and the woman's
expression wasn't a kind one. Then again, nobody's expression was
particularly kind. They were all looking at Celeste with a mixture
of surprise and suspicion. While they lacked the sharp, fearful
edge of some of the soldiers she'd seen, she could bet that none of
them were ready to be her friend right now.

She began to run her fingers
over her thumbs, the press of skin on skin tight and grating. It
was something she did when she was nervous – a habit she hadn't
needed to re-ignite for a few years. Whenever she'd woken up from a
horrible nightmare as a child, she'd always shifted her hands
around, playing with her thumbs and fingers, trying to dry off the
sweat that had collected there. Not that it had ever helped of
course.

She saw the pilot load into
the front of the chopper, and heard the faint rustling sound as he
prepared for take-off. For a tight second, she wondered whether
Jack was even getting on the helicopter, but she saw him at last.
He pulled himself on board and sat opposite her, between Miss
Redhead and another soldier. He spread his legs far apart, shifting
down until his elbows rested on them, then he ran his knuckles
along his hairline. It took a long time for him to look her way
though. When he did, he quickly darted his eyes to the
left.

Great, just
great. This is my stupid fault for taking that wrong turn.
She thought bitterly.
If I hadn't driven
towards the army base, I would never have come across that Yaoguai.
I would be at home, in bed, and would be happy. But, oh no, one
wrong turn, and now I am in a sodding helicopter about to be flown
across the State and taken to a shadowy Government agency that
deals with demons.

As the helicopter took off,
Celeste paused to reflect that she'd never been on a helicopter
before. Still, now wasn't exactly the time to excitedly bob up and
down and press her face into one of the windows to check out the
view. No doubt, Mr. McDougall at her side would put a rather
powerful arm around her middle, pull her back to the seat, and
maybe even strap her there.

This is going
to be a really, really long and painful flight.
She realized with a heavy sigh. Several of
the soldiers looked her way sharply, maybe wondering if her sigh
was a prelude to attack. They all looked so jumpy. Though Celeste
could appreciate why; they were shocked by this news. She'd seen
their faces when that Yaoguai had whimpered at her and had pressed
itself against the glass cage trying to get away.

Why was it
afraid of me?
She
wandered as she brought her arms up around her middle, realizing
that McDougall noted the move with a sharp tick of his head.
What exactly do
they think I'm going to do? Call out the denizens of the dead and
crash the helicopter?

Three hours. She'd heard one
of them say it took three hours to get to the Knight base. A full
three hours on a chopper full of soldiers with guns that were
highly suspicious of her and didn't look as if they had a problem
shooting her and pushing her out the door.

Great.

Celeste closed her eyes.
There was nothing else she could do.

Jack West

She'd closed her eyes ages
ago, and she hadn't opened them once, not even when the chopper had
faced a sudden side wind, and the bird had lurched to
starboard.

Maybe it was for the best,
because he couldn't bring himself to look at her when her eyes were
open. As soon as she'd looked at him when he'd hopped aboard the
chopper, he'd broken eye contact immediately.

He couldn't face her right
now, and he knew exactly why. Celeste Cross had just lost her
ordinary life and she was never going to get it back.

What was more, Jack had no
idea what would happen to her. It depended on what Knight
uncovered. Right now Jack had no clue what that would be. He
couldn't begin to comprehend why a Yaoguai was afraid of
her.