Authors: Elle Hill
“I guess I know how to swim,” she said dryly. Her arms and legs moved in lazy circles underwater, keeping her afloat. She stretched out her legs and toes and felt nothing but water beneath her.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” she called. “What are you this time: a sea monster? Nessie of the ocean? Either way, I’m ready. I like sushi!” Corny, sure, but her shaky display of bravado made her feel better, more in control.
Her last scenario had included a bizarre mix of misfit items in a room: giant beach balls, an antique sewing machine, a well-worn cat collar, scraps of blue shag carpet. She had a vague memory of a huge, bright green tractor. The inevitable menace had come in the form of a locked trunk.
In fact, most of her other dreams bobbed hazily in her consciousness like—well, like a White, brown-haired woman in a nameless ocean. Her only vivid memories involved Reed. Each time she entered a different scene, she looked for him, waited for him. Kind of pathetic, really, that her subconscious would choose such a trite story: damsel in distress waits for visits from a sexy prince. At least she knew he wouldn’t be her rescuer. He’d made it clear to her that he was here to help, but she was ultimately the one in charge.
Katana still hadn’t figured out why Reed popped randomly into some dreams. She’d briefly considered his claims that he was a real person with a real life who only visited her during his own natural sleep cycles, but that was too fantastic to believe. Which seemed likelier: A dreaming woman had created a (metaphorically) physical representation of rationality as a way to keep her talking, ground her, urge her to take control of this craziness? Or, as Reed had claimed, was he some kind of psychic, some kind of male Sylvia Browne who swam randomly into her dreams every night? Right.
Regardless, she was pretty ticked off with her subconscious. Reed notwithstanding, most of her dream experiences had been unpleasant, scary, infuriating, often downright violent. What the hell kind of mind dreamed up this never-ending stream of nightmares?
And more importantly,
why couldn’t she wake up?
She had some ideas, of course, none of which seemed—
Something grabbed her ankle. She screamed and scrambled underwater to withdraw her sword from its scabbard. It slid too slowly.
The hand, or whatever it was, moved upward, grabbing her calf, her hip, her arm. She kicked her legs to keep afloat and raised the sword out of the water.
She had started swinging her sword when, not inches from her face, Reed’s head emerged from the water. Katana halted her arm’s movement.
“I almost killed you!” she snapped at him. Sighing, she laboriously re-sheathed her sword.
Reed spat water from his mouth and rubbed his eyes. His shoulders, she couldn’t help but notice, were also bare.
“I missed you, too,” he said, blinking water out of his eyes. One of his hands gripped her shoulder, and his head, so close to hers, partially blotted out the sky. His short, normally springy, hair slicked over his scalp.
I did miss you
, she thought, but kept silent.
Reed started moving his legs to tread water, and of course he kicked Katana. “Sorry,” he muttered, and jerked his body backward a few inches while still keeping a tight grip on her shoulder. His usually graceful body moved jerkily, and his eyes rolled as he took in his surroundings.
“Ocean,” he said flatly, in case she had missed it. A wave rocked their bodies, and his hand tightened on her shoulder. He stared fiercely at her, teeth clenched and nostrils flared.
“Do you know how to swim?” she asked gently.
She expected him to scoff, but instead he nodded, albeit somewhat jerkily. “My mother made me learn when I was just a little tadpole.”
Seeing this big man struggle with his fear, she reached out a hand and brushed his jaw. “Hold on to me,” she said with a grin. “I’m a natural floater. It’s one of this body’s many secret powers.”
Reed stared at her for a moment or two. She wasn’t sure if he would be offended by her offer or amused by her feeble joke. Finally, he smiled at her, and his eyes crinkled. “I always did like women with meat on their bones,” he said. His tight grip on her shoulder remained. “Speaking of bones and meat, are we naked again?”
Katana used a hand to shield her smile from him.
“Damn, girl, I’m not sure whether I feel flattered or violated.” Another wave lifted them both, and Reed’s smile receded. His eyes darted right to left. “I, um, I’ve been thinking a lot about what to ask you when I saw you again,” he said with a heroic attempt at nonchalance.
Aquaphobia is one of the most common phobias
, she thought with some fondness and concern, and then she immediately wondered where she’d gleaned that tidbit.
“You’re here now,” she said gently, and barely jerked when something smooth brushed against the bottom of her foot.
Reed looked down for a moment, and water splashed into his mouth. He started and coughed, and his flailing hand drove a spray of water directly into Katana’s face.
My hero
, she thought.
“You okay?” he gasped, and she nodded. “Sorry about . . . this.”
“What girl hasn’t had fantasies about knights in shining armor trying to drown them?” she asked, grinning.
“Next time choose a dryer environment,” he growled, scowling at her. She laughed at him.
“I planned on asking you your last name,” Reed told her, once again brushing water from his eyes. Out here, in the sparkling daylight, she saw amber streaks in their dark brown depths.
She opened her mouth and, after a moment, shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said.
Reed nodded jerkily, unsurprised. “Remember your age? Hometown? A phone number? Anything that can help me find you?”
“Find me?” she asked dumbly. “I’m right here.”
“I mean the real you, the flesh you,” Reed said with a small smile.
Katana glanced upward through spiky eyelashes at the searing brightness of the sun. It was irrational, she knew, but the sunlight made her feel better, more optimistic. Certainly giddier, or maybe that was the relief of having someone to talk to.
“I don’t know my last name,” she repeated.
“Is Katana your real name?”
Her gaze sliced downward. “Of course it is,” she said sharply.
Reed’s eyebrows rose. “I’m not saying it’s not a great name,” he said, “but I don’t know too many people named after Japanese swords.”
She stared at him for a moment. Her sword. It was a katana, her name. Why hadn’t she made the connection before now?
This place makes me dumb
, she thought bitterly, shamefully.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Reed said gently, and then jerked as water splashed him in the face. Had she spoken aloud? “This place, these dreams, they make you forget, keep you so hyped up all the time you can’t focus on the more mundane things.”
She lowered her head. Here, treading water in the middle of some unnamed sea her mind had conjured, balancing the numbing coldness of the water with the warmth of Reed and the sun, she tried to remember who she was, where she came from.
She was from L.A., right? Many of her dreams involved scenes specific to the city. If nothing else, she knew she’d lived there for several years. But around the corners of her memory, she felt smears of darkness, moonlight, a shiny puddle, the smell and feel of desert air.
After a moment, she looked at him again and said, “Up north into the desert. Palmdale? Acton? Something like that. I was born and raised there.” She took a deep breath, glanced downward into the smudgy depths. “I think my name really is Katana,” she continued. “It feels right to me, plus I keep having flashes of people calling me ‘Kat.’ I thought they meant the feline, but I think it’s a nickname.”
“I knew you could do it,” Reed said with a gentleness she found doubly endearing, given the current circumstances. “What about a—” He jerked and reflexively squeezed her shoulder. His eyes had widened.
“It’s here,” Katana said quietly.
Reed stared downward. He took a few deep breaths before looking up. “Make it stop.” His tone was even.
Katana shook her head. “I’ve tried. I talk to It, I run from It, I try to fight It. Nothing works. I don’t know what else to do.”
Something cold and smooth brushed against her left ankle. She twitched.
“Concentrate again,” Reed said, and she heard the strain underneath his quietness.
She looked at him, at his strongly angled face and his handsome jaw, complete with his usual stubble, and into his compassionate eyes. “I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered, and dropped her head, embarrassed. Seawater filled her mouth, and she spat it out.
Reed used his grip on her shoulder to draw them together. Once she was close enough to press against him, he kissed her lightly on the mouth. “Girl, as often as you bring me here in the altogether, I’m getting an inkling that you enjoy my company.”
She chuckled. “Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t control our clothing choices.”
“This is your world,” he said, and she saw his eyes glance downward again. Perhaps something had brushed against him again. “You control everything here.”
Up this close, eyes not closed, Katana saw Reed had a small mole just under his jawline. She also saw two silver hairs at his temple. “Why are you— Do you hate the water?” she asked him, meeting his eyes.
Reed tilted his head very slightly at her, examining her, committing her physicality to memory. He knew better than she what she looked like.
“Pretty boring story. When my baby sister was four and I was nine, our mother took us swimming at some friend’s house. Long story short, when no one was looking, my sister drifted into the five foot and then fell out of her float toy, so I had to jump in and get her. I didn’t know how to swim, but I got her back to the steps.” His tone remained flat and his face expressionless, but Katana heard, saw, or felt the waves of emotion rocking his dry account.
“So your mom made you take lessons after that?”
He shook his head. “She taught us herself over the course of that summer.”
“Is your sister scared of the water now?” Katana asked.
“Of course not,” he said, smiling slightly. “She loves it. It’s only big bro that learned how to fear that day.” He raised his hand from the water and tucked a soggy strand of her hair behind her ear.
Something small and cold, like fingertips, fanned across Katana’s foot. She gasped.
“Make it go away,” Reed said, his hand tightening on her shoulder. “Better yet, make us go away. This is your world. Make it work. I believe in you, Katana.”
Katana sighed and closed her eyes. Reluctantly, she jerked her head up and down in agreement.
Hadn’t she tried this before sometime? Had she been successful? Had she escaped the nightmarish quality of her dreams, found at least temporary respite?
Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate
, she chided. But wait. If she concentrated on concentrating, wasn’t that counterproductive?
Stop
, she commanded.
We need to get out of here, to find somewhere safe
. She thought about the sea around them and about the being below. Not a sea, but a park, maybe. Instead of cold wetness, they would feel sun-warmed air kissing their cheeks. Rather than treading water, they could instead stand on cool, sweet grass.
Reed drew in his breath, and she felt it, then: a flickering. For a moment, she felt the cold density of water fade, felt her buoyancy leave her. Her feet tingled from hundreds of soft, tiny blades . . .
Something grabbed her foot, and she gasped and opened her eyes. Sparkling blue saltwater spread around her, and her body grew cold again.
Katana opened her mouth to explain to Reed, but with a painful jerk, It dragged her under the water. Salty water filled her nose and stung her tongue.
Reed’s hand remained on her shoulder, and he tried to pull her up; Katana was stunned when It let him. She opened streaming, pained eyes to see Reed’s tense face.
“I did it!” she had time to gasp before a sharp tug on her ankle dragged her downward into the water. It was only a few inches, but it was enough to submerge her mouth and nose. She kicked both feet, trying to break free, but of course she had no force behind her kicks. Nonetheless, It let her rise once again.
She surfaced again with a noisy gasp. Reed, his blanched face pinched into rigid lines, still held her shoulder. With a small smile at him, she shook her head and pulled free.
No use both of us going down
, she wanted to say to him, but the monster below tugged her almost gently downward. This time she did not resurface.
Chapter 6
Alexio Greco loomed over most of them like a dark specter. His light brown, oily eyes flowed under heavy brows; his gaunt cheeks cast shadows on his olive skin. At six-foot-four or so, he met Reed’s eyes at the same level, although his unruly tangle of black curls made him look even taller.
Reed hadn’t known what to expect of their Greek host: a laughing bear-like man, maybe, or something else straight out of a Hollywood comedy. The hard, horizontal planes of Alexio’s face, along with his height and emaciated figure, surprised him.
“Welcome,” the man greeted them, his voice a honeyed baritone. Quina and Paul shook his hand, Maricruz shone benevolently upon them all, and Berto shifted his weight from foot to foot while grinning with painful awkwardness.
Their small group entered the tall, Victorian-style house. Inside, darkly stained hardwood floors spread like water around them, reflecting the lighting from ancient chandeliers. Alexio led them around a large and polished wooden staircase that wound upward and to the left. Down a dim hallway they trod, silent except for the squeak of old floorboards, to a room at the end.
Inside the room, clearly some kind of conference room, a half dozen people clustered around a large, glass-topped wooden dining table. Cabinets rimmed the room, and a plush rug with a faded rose pattern strained toward the four corners.
“You’ll forgive me for not having enough chairs,” Alexio said, “but I didn’t know you were bringing your entire Family.” He nodded at someone —Cor, Reed saw, who wriggled her eyebrows at him before jumping up and running out the door. She returned a moment later with a dining chair tucked under each arm.
“My apologies to all,” Quina said after sitting down. She smoothed the wrinkles out of her light blue skirt. Somehow, Reed ended up sitting opposite her and next to Cor. “Our newest member has never experienced a Family meeting, and we wanted to introduce him to it and you to him.”
“Reed Jayvyn,” Alexio said in his deep, quiet voice. Quina had explained on the drive over Alexio’s exalted status as the Boschi’s Regional Patriarch, or ‘Arch. (“‘Arch” because, Quina pointed out, undoubtedly worried about leaving Reed’s sexist assumptions unchallenged, a woman in his position would be the “Matriarch.”) As befitted a man of his station, Alexio seated himself at the head of the table and folded his hands before him.
Reed nodded at him. “Family Greco,” he said, looking at everyone.
“Only Corinna, Meredith, and I are Family Greco,” Alexio said, waving one of his long-fingered hands at Cor and a petite Black woman sitting directly to her right. Cor waved jauntily, and Meredith, a forty-something woman whose feet barely brushed the floor, dropped her eyes and smiled shyly. “Family Tailor, would you like to introduce yourselves?”
A dapper man in his fifties, clad in a smart gray suit, his black hair brushed into an expensive style, nodded crisply. “We’re pleased to meet you, Reed Jayvyn,” he said. Sitting next to him, Quina smiled slightly, politely, but Reed saw her shift ever so slightly closer to Paul on her left. “My name is Izek Delgado. This”—he clapped a twenty-something, blue-eyed, version of himself on the shoulder—“is my son, Javier. His mother was Ericka Tailor.” He said it with some pride.
“I’m Carnie,” a voice on Reed’s side of the table piped up. He looked down the table on his right and saw a plump, round-cheeked older woman, light eyes almost lost between bushy gray brows and plump, ruddy cheeks. Her gray curls bounced on her head as she nodded at him, grinning widely. “My name is Carnelian, but you can imagine how burdensome that name can be after sixty-eight years. I prefer ‘Carnie,’ anyway. It conjures up images of funhouses and Ferris wheels, don’t you think?”
“Now, you better quit flirting, Ms. Carnie,” Cor said with mock ferocity, “and give all the other girls a chance.”
Carnie giggled and made shooing gestures with her hand.
“Now that we’re all here,” Alexio began. Everyone quieted, and two or three people, Quina among them, brought out notepads and pens. Javier, Izek’s son, pushed a button on the tiny notebook computer sitting in front of him. “I wanted to discuss our latest investment plan. For the last two years, a group called the Hope Fund has been trying to raise funds to complete a homeless shelter on which they’d begun construction. Given the hard economic times, their prior investors withdrew their support. When we learned of this, we of course offered our support.
“I’m sure I don’t need to outline the benefits to you. Nonetheless, I will do so quite briefly, especially since the requested donation is rather sizable.” Alexio steepled his hands before him. “For tax purposes alone this is a smart move. Also, I don’t mind telling you our foundation could use some good press after our rather short-sighted and unwise backing of Mr. Huber.”
Several mumbles highlighted his dry remark.
“Can I ask for clarification?” Reed asked politely.
“You may remember Alphonse Huber, who ran for congress a couple of years ago,” Javier, Izek’s son, said quietly without looking up from his notepad. “We were very public and enthusiastic in our support of his campaign. Unfortunately, he was dumb enough to get caught stealing campaign funds to pay for his whoring.”
Izek cleared his throat. “Mr. Huber’s sexual tastes were eccentric, to say the least.”
Reed nodded. He remembered hearing about a local politician getting caught engaging in gravity-challenging sex acts with underage prostitutes.
“That smeared egg all over our public face,” Javier continued, surfacing briefly from his computer before diving back in.
“Okay,” Reed said. “I was asking, though, about this foundation you mentioned. Is this specific to House Greco, or are all of you members?”
“All of
us
are,” Maricruz said pointedly in her steel-wrapped-in-satin voice. Several heads nodded.
“Alexio is in charge, though, since he has the education and experience to run such an enterprise,” Quina contributed.
“What kind of enterprise?” Reed persisted.
“Our foundation is known as The Family Heritage—kind of an amusing double entendre,” Alexio said, although he did not sound amused. “We’re a political and philanthropic organization focused on promoting traditional family values.”
Well, hell, there was a mission statement if Reed had ever heard one. And traditional family values?
This
bunch?
“What does that mean, exactly?” Reed asked, sitting back in his hard wooden chair. “You’re anti-divorce? Anti-gay? Fans of abstinence-only sex ed?” Under the table, Cor grabbed his hand and squeezed, although whether to applaud or warn him, he wasn’t sure.
Alexio’s face congealed into cragged, shadowed peaks. “We’re not against anything. We’re advocates for traditional values of familial devotion, personal responsibility, and intact families.”
Reed pushed his chair back from the table. “You’re interested in keeping families ‘intact’? Why, so you know where they are if you want to feed off them?”
“That’s enough, Reed,” Quina snapped at the same time Javier slammed a fist down on the tabletop. Several people, including Cor, jumped.
“I won’t listen to this young pup spout his ignorance and prejudice,” Javier proclaimed, although Reed was quite certain the boy was at least six years younger than he. “I, for one, work tirelessly for the betterment of our people, and I refuse to have some boorish newcomer challenge our ethics and motivations.”
“Bullshit,” Reed said mildly. “We all know why you want to fund a homeless shelter. I went with Mari to a funeral and watched her fatten up on all that juicy grief. What better place to go for a pick-me-up than a shelter? It’s kind of like a Broschi drive-through.”
Reed’s words splashed into a vast silence.
After a moment, a girlish giggle cracked the frozen scene. “Well, hell, you have to give the boy points for honesty,” Carnelian, AKA Carnie, laughed. “You’re right, Reed Jayvyn—it’s more than civic duty that motivates us in this instance.”
“But why should that matter? As long as people get their shelter, does it matter that we’re also benefiting from our generosity?” Maricruz asked. “How many people do you know who donate selflessly?”
“Tax breaks are one thing,” Reed said. “Feeding on people without their permission is another.”
“Oh, god,” Cor groaned. “The self-righteousness of one who eats cows with big brown eyes and pigs with sweet pink snouts and never bats an eyelash. Our kind snacks on animals a little closer to home——without killing them, mind you—and all of a sudden you’ve staked out the moral high ground?”
“You feed on pain and fear,” Reed emphasized.
“You feed on death,” Cor snapped.
“And you’re one of us, Reed,” Mari reminded him.
“Enough,” Quina announced, and they all fell silent. “Reed, you would definitely be more comfortable waiting for us in the parlor.”
Katana yawned and stretched her neck. Her muscles throbbed in weary protest. She pried her eyelids apart, and her blurry vision wavered in and out of focus.
Although a little stiff, she felt pretty decent this morning. Those crazy dreams . . .
“Am I awake?” she gasped aloud. Indeed, her body lay prone, and above her loomed a textured white ceiling one might find anywhere, in any apartment. She glanced around the room. Although a little more sterile and utilitarian than she’d prefer, it looked like a fairly average large bedroom, albeit one bereft of furnishings.
I’m awake, I’m awake. Oh my god!
Heart throbbing in her chest, Katana spent a precious moment reveling in the feel of the sheet beneath her, in the quiet of an early morning, in the taste of morning breath stagnating in her mouth. Then, grinning, she pushed against the mattress to leverage herself out of bed . . . and found she couldn’t move.
Pulse pounding a nauseating rhythm in her throat, she tried moving various parts of her body: arm, leg, foot, bottom, shoulders. She tried again, breath stuck in her throat. Only her head and neck obeyed her commands.
“I’m paralyzed,” she whispered wetly. Was this her reality? This, after the countless rounds with monsters, menaces, and unseen foes? This, when she’d imagined her worst fear as a mouthful of sharp teeth? No sword could help her now.
A draft of cool air blew over her, and she felt goose flesh rise on her arms and legs. Why hadn’t someone covered her up with a blanket? What kind of monster would leave a paralyzed woman lying naked and vulnerable in her bedroom while the air-conditioning sighed through ceiling vents?
“I need a blanket!” she called weakly, and waited. After another moment passed, she called out again, “Hello?”
She heard a man’s voice then, growing louder as he walked toward her room. A man? Coming to tend to her? Shouldn’t her caretaker be a woman?
“No, no!” she cried. “I’m not decent!”
“. . . think you’ll be pleased. We really do have the best selection,” a man’s voice said. She could not see the entryway to the bedroom but could hear from the acoustics when he entered the room. His footsteps cracked on hardwood floors as he approached her.
“Hmm. Not bad,” another man’s voice, this one higher, agreed. The two men stood somewhere behind her, where she could not see. Naked, cold, trembling and helpless, Katana lay spread out before them, a visual buffet.
“Go away!” she yelled at them.
“What looks good to you?” the first man, professionally cheerful, inquired.
“A lot to choose from.”
They both laughed quietly.
“Leave me alone!” Katana snarled at them. Spittle flew from her mouth and landed on her neck. She could do nothing about it.
“Maybe . . . there. Possibly there?”
“Smart choices. Want me to do the honor?”
Rapid footsteps, a gasp, a feminine voice. “What are you two doing?”
“Thank you,” Katana whispered, hot tears burning her eyes.
One of the men laughed. “We weren’t going to start without you, sweetie.”
“Is this it?” the woman asked.
“We were just deciding how to divide it up.”
They chatted on as Katana stared at the ceiling in horror. She felt her sword, that constant companion, pressing coldly against her hip and thigh. Fat lot of good it did her now.
Her sword?
“I’m still dreaming,” she said aloud. “Still dreaming.”
“It’s kind of noisy, isn’t it?” the woman asked doubtfully.
The first man laughed. “Don’t worry. It does that sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“So we’re decided?” the second man asked. “There, there, and over there.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” the first man said. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”
Their feet shuffled forward, toward her.
A dream. It’s just a dream.
The trio moved into view, then, crowding over her, blocking her view of the bright white ceiling. Although the room’s light hadn’t been overly bright, they loomed, black and silhouetted, above her.
“It’s even better up close. Maybe we’ll want a little more.” The man’s voice brushed wetly, warmly over her face.
A finger descended on her bare stomach and traced a round shape around her navel. “Maybe right around here, too?” the woman asked quietly.
“Don’t touch me,” she growled, but her voice trembled.
“You have excellent taste.”
Above her, one of the silhouettes produced a long, thin knife. Oddly, she could see it perfectly; although occluded by the figures’ hulking forms, the room’s light nonetheless gleamed off its lengthy blade. The knife descended point down to touch the place on her stomach where the woman’s finger had landed.
Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream
, she chanted, but from a sharp-edged distance, she heard her voice whistling in horror.