Hunted Dreams (6 page)

The muted sound of her footfalls fanned outward as she strode along. Her head felt muzzy, her ears plugged with cotton.

She heard a small sound from behind her and faltered briefly in her step. Her breath catching, she did not turn around before increasing her pace. Probably just her imagination, anyway. This chilly, gargantuan hall, or whatever it was, could get to anyone.

A frigid blast of air gusted through her hair. She gasped and finally spun around. Nothing. The view behind her looked identical to the one before. She spun around ninety degrees, and the view remained the exact same. As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, did it really matter, then, in which direction she traveled?

Doing a complete turn, she surveyed the bland scenery and continued walking in roughly the same direction as before. She heard her own breathing, loud in the complete silence. Her heartbeat pounded in her throat. Her eyes flitted side-to-side, scanning for potential dangers.

An arctic touch sighed across her bare shoulder. Gasping, she spun around again, only to encounter the same vista as before.

Her heart slammed painfully. “Come out and show yourself,” she muttered, her fists balling. If only she had a face, a body, a name for her tormentor instead of this terrorizing, invisible and malicious, presence.

“I’m a cat, not a mouse!” she yelled, and jumped at the sound of her own voice. Like the scenery, it sounded fuzzy, but she felt it bounce inside her skull.

What the stars? Where had that come from?

Something edged and brittle—a long fingernail, perhaps—quickly skimmed the back of her neck. She spun around with a gasp. Once again, nothing. She turned again, expecting something behind her—er, in front of her, or maybe . . .

She stood there, unsure which direction was which, eternally in the middle of unchanging scenery. Her eyes blurred with tears, but her fists balled at her sides.

“You won’t like me when you finally show yourself,” she promised the presence. She was furious to hear a slight tremor in her low voice. If only she had a weapon. If only this tormentor would confront her. If only she could leave this place.

A gentle shove sent her stumbling forward. Knowing better but unable to stop herself, she turned around. And found nothing.

“Stop it!” she snarled.

Another shove, a little less gentle, sent her reeling forward. She growled inarticulately, and before she could open her mouth to utter something, anything, to make her feel like a participant rather than a victim, she received another shove between her shoulder blades.

“Quit it right now!” she shouted, fear and anger slogging through her murky brain.

One final shove sent her sprawling to the ground. Her eyes finally spilled tears, not from pain but the agonizing familiarity of her impotent fury. She lay stomach-down on the ground for a minute, eyes leaking, teeth grinding.

After a moment, the woman rose to a kneeling position. Although the stance was precarious, she felt better for it. In as calm a voice as she could manage, she announced to the room in general, “I’m still mine.”

A blow to her back sent her slamming back into the embrace of cold marble.

That night before bed, Reed padded barefoot to the locked room he’d noticed on yesterday’s tour. He pressed his palm against the wood and stood for several moments before turning and walking back to his bedroom.

Chapter 3

“Welcome!” a hearty, masculine voice cried. “We’ve been waiting for ages!”

The woman shook her head and rose warily to her feet. Her body no longer hurt, her head no longer felt quite as fuzzy. Before her stood a man wearing gray dress slacks. She had an impression of a wide smile and a broad, white face but couldn’t seem to bring everything into focus.

“Where am I?” she asked through stiff lips. Looking around her, she felt more than saw a group of people—all races, ages, and sizes—sitting around a dinner table. The gentle roar of a happy crowd stirred around her.

The man laughed again and settled a hand between her shoulder blades. She jerked very slightly at a small electrical shock as the man led her gently, slowly, to the enormous table. The room beyond it lay in shadows, reminding her of, well, something or another.

“You look as gorgeous as always,” the man said in teasing tones, patting her back. She looked down at herself and saw soft, white skin showcased in a sleeveless purple dress. Her arms were plump and strong, her stomach rounded against the silky material. Her cleavage was daunting.

“I’m a big girl,” she said with some surprise. She wasn’t sure if she meant her age or size. Either way, she stood a little taller and looked around with more interest.

“He got here hours ago,” the man said to her. He pointed toward an empty chair at the head of the elegant, laden table, and she tottered toward it on her calf-tormenting high heels. The red, velvet-padded seat welcomed her lush derriere. The indistinct chattering and tinkling laughter continued its lazy swirls around the room.

I’m a woman, a big woman
, she thought with only slightly dulled wonderment. She folded her arms and cupped the flesh around her biceps. Although soft, they also felt strong and capable.

“Tell us what kept you, Kitty Cat,” the man in gray said genially and he sat down next to her. He snapped a napkin from its careful folds and draped it in his lap. She still couldn’t quite see his face, but she felt him looking at her, his smile wide and toothy.

Something tickled her memory. Was her name Kitty? She felt her cheeks lift as she glanced downward. No way she was a Kitty. This much woman had to be a Kat.

“I don’t know who I am,” she said quietly, lifting her eyes. The room behind them remained fuzzy and black.

He snorted laughter. “You always did have a penchant for dramatic entrances, my dear.” Everyone around the table laughed, although she wasn’t entirely certain it was at her.

“What’s my name?” she asked him. She looked around the table and could still discern no faces, although she saw dresses and suits of every color and hands in various shades of brown.

“No, we held off till you arrived. Don’t you feel guilty?” His voice rained amusement. And coldness. The dinner chatter eddied harmlessly around them.

Her eyes snapped back to him. He was gesturing imperiously, his hand waving before a face she could not see, to someone whose face she could not make out.

But I’m no tiny, shrinking violet
, she thought.
How could I not know?

“I’m feeling stronger,” she said conversationally, grasping her napkin and placing it on her lap. “You know what I’d like, though? Some kind of weapon beyond my body. I’m strong, but I wouldn’t turn down extra protection.”

“Of course we asked Cook to make your favorite. I remember what happened last time we forgot. You wouldn’t let us forget about it for weeks!”

She watched as her hand, broad and white with short fingernails, picked up the butter knife sitting to the right of her curry-yellow dinner plate. Reflecting the darkness, the knife shone a matte black. She raised the blade to her eyes and stared into it: A white face with light brown eyes. Her lips looked chapped under her bright red lipstick and a tiny stone twinkled in her right nostril, but otherwise she looked reassuringly normal. It was a good face.

She did not replace the knife.

A wind whipped around her, ruffling those tendrils of hair that weren’t pulled back. Lifting the knife, she snapped her head around. An unperturbed, white-clad server, probably male, plunked a covered plate in front of her.

Oh god
, she thought, staring at the gleaming silver of the plate cover.
This is where the horror comes in
. She gritted her teeth and clutched her knife.

“I refuse to be a victim, you know,” she told him in as calm a voice as she could manage. The serving boy flitted around the table, his actions jerky and incidental.

“I told you he’d arrived,” the first man said. He gestured toward the opposite end of the table. “He’s been waiting to meet you.”

Heart throbbing, the woman looked where he’d indicated. Far away, impossibly far, a silent figure sat opposite her at the foot of the table. The man stared at her, eyes intense, mouth pursed. She knew this because she could see him, unlike everyone else, clearly.

It was the man she’d seen gobbled up by the nothingness. A big, strong man, well-shaped head sprouting a half-inch of black curls. He wore a black suit this time, and his light brown skin gleamed against the brightness of his starched white shirt.

The background noise swirled around them like mayflies, words buzzing and laughs stinging.

“Who are you?” She meant the question to sound brave, even harsh. Maybe she succeeded.

The man’s eyes wrinkled in confusion as he stared at her. She realized he couldn’t hear her over the gentle din.
Couldn’t hear her?
If he was the mastermind behind all these games, he obviously needed to work on his personal intimidation factor. And, well, being a little uglier would help.

“Who is that?” she asked the man next to her, keeping her eyes on the big man opposite her.

“I’m not sure why you insisted on inviting him,” the man said. Once again, his voice had lost its jovial sheen. She thought he might be looking at her.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“But you were always a stubborn little thing.”

She threw her napkin back on the table and started rising. The man next to her grabbed her arm and yanked her back to her seat. Someone materialized behind her, or perhaps had always been there, and placed restraining hands on her shoulders.

“You haven’t yet tried your food,” her faceless host hissed.

At the other end of the table, the man had also tried to rise, and arms on either side of him kept him seated. His face shone with fury. Her breath caught. Was he, like her, a prisoner, then?

“Let me go,” she said calmly to the man whose fingers painfully encircled her arm.

“I promised you your favorite,” he said, each word dropping like chunks of ice. “Let’s feast, shall we?”

“Let me go!” she yelled, yanking backward.

The room silenced.

The woman drew a startled breath and stopped struggling. She raised her eyes, and although she could see no faces, she knew they all stared at her in frozen silence. Even the man opposite her stared silently at her, his own struggle momentarily forgotten. She could hear her own breath as she raggedly exhaled.

“Kitty Cat wants to start the feast,” the man said with a complete lack of inflection in his tone. His fingers burned coldly against her skin.

A dark hand stretched out from around her and grabbed the top of the serving dish. It paused for a moment, or perhaps time slowed. The woman looked at the man opposite her. His nostrils flared and his eyes blazed, but he sat silently, seeming as oppressed as she by the silence and attention.

A cold energy pulsed through the room while she foolishly clutched her butter knife. Not a foot from her, the dark brown hand suddenly snatched the cover from her plate of food.

Screeching, she jumped and her high heels tap-danced on the wooden floor as she struggled to shove her chair backward. The person behind her held her in place while she bucked harmlessly in her well-padded chair.

Before her, a small sphere lolled in a dark red sauce, errant honey-yellow strands painting garish patterns on the plate.

Reed sat up with a gasp. What the— Where the hell
was
he? Before his muscles could fully tense, he remembered Berto, the Broschi, his new room. A whole new world.

Apparently, one that came with its own set of freaky dreams. The first night’s dream—a snarling woman awaiting death with him—he could dismiss. But seeing the same woman in a totally different, and equally bizarre, nightmare? A strange woman, one he knew he’d never met, playing the lead in his dreams? How weird was that?

He’d never been one to remember, let alone analyze, the stories his brain told once he fell asleep. These two dreams, though, while still fuzzy and random, loomed in his mind like actual memories.

A dinner party? Hardly the most menacing setting. And yet . . . He recalled the jagged quality of the room’s darkness, the hissing sibilance of background noise, the terrified fury on the woman’s face. The horror on her plate.

As he always said, when life throws out mysteries, take it back to the basics.  He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Nothing more basic than a scalding hot shower. On his way to the bathroom, it occurred to him that perhaps she hadn’t starred in his dreams.

Hell, maybe
he
was the interloper.

After a training session that left Reed cross-eyed with boredom, Quina put Maricruz in charge of furthering his training—at a movie theater. Sitting next to one another in the theater, greasy fingers reaching for popcorn flavored with something straight out of a chemist’s beaker, they stared ahead at the giant screen.

“This is one of the best places to come recharge,” Maricruz whispered as some hapless, onscreen teenaged couple smoked a joint before sliding into second base.

“A cheap horror flick?” Reed rumbled, sipping from the vastly overpriced soda Mari had insisted on purchasing for him.

“Absolutely. Everyone knows the clichés well enough to know these two horny kids are practically begging for some kind of gruesome death. Feel the slight twang of fear from the other audience members?”

He did. Although weak and fluttery, the other patrons’ hunger for fear and adrenalin feathered across his breastbone. When, twenty seconds later, a scythe rather conclusively ended the teenagers’ experimentations, the audience gasped and wriggled in a terror almost sexual in its enjoyment.

Next to him, Maricruz shuddered. When he looked over at her, her eyes gleamed brighter in the darkness and her lips stretched in a slightly redder smile.

“Horror is my favorite,” she whispered, and crunched a handful of kernels in her mouth. “But war movies are good, too. And don’t tell him I told you, but Paul especially likes tragic romances.”

With a cheeky grin, she turned her gaze back to the movie screen. The whites of her eyes glowed blue in the dim light of the theater.

A few hours later, glutted on others’ watercolor terror, they strolled lazily away from the theater toward his pickup. Maricruz tucked her arm around Reed’s. “I love Old Town Pasadena!” she gushed. “Let’s walk around for a bit before heading back home.”

Slightly bemused by her sudden girlishness, Reed nonetheless let her lead them down Colorado Boulevard. He’d never much enjoyed Old Town, probably because he’d never had much in the way of extra income to blow on bronze sculptures and seaweed facials.

On both sides of the street, charming shops (equipped with the extra “P” and an “E” that automatically raised their prices by fifty or more percent) and low-key chain stores melded together behind quaint brick facades and tastefully modest signs. Old Town Pasadena had been designed for pedestrians, many of whom currently crowded the sidewalks.

“They make the best ravioli,” Maricruz said, pointing across the street. “And if you’re into antique toys, that store has the best.” She flashed a dazzling smile at him, carefully crafted enough to earn an extra “L.” She glanced at her gold watch. “We have enough time to stop for a quick bite, if you’re hungry.”

“I’m not hungry,” he replied. More to the point, his wallet
was
. “But we can stop if you’d like to eat something.” Something tangible, anyway.

“It’s all right,” she said. “But would you mind if we stopped in that stationery shop up there?”

He shook his head with a small smile.

Forty minutes later, his smile had taken an early retirement. He appreciated the many functions of paper and pen but remained unclear how anyone could spend over a half-hour riffling through various tools of communication.

Smiling apologetically, Mari finally rejoined him at the front of the store. She held a small paper bag. “I’m a card fiend,” she admitted sheepishly, shaking the thin brown bag. “Wanna go home now?”

“I’m fine with going back,” he responded, careful not to emphasize the last word too much. They exited the store, into a late afternoon that had grown heavy with twilight.

Mari grabbed his arm. “I know a shortcut to the parking structure,” she said and pulled him toward a nearby alleyway.

The alley wasn’t as poorly lit as he would have expected; the main thoroughfare glowed with lights while shadows pulsed along walls and corners. At the other end of the alley, a couple walked, laughing, toward Mari and him. Both were tall women, one angular and one on the fleshy side of stocky.

Reed pulled Mari to the right to allow the other couple to pass. He wondered how much he’d have to pay for the privilege of parking in Old Town Pasadena. As he and Maricruz drew abreast of the couple, he nodded to the women. Luckily, he had about thirty dollars left in . . .

Mari halted abruptly, and he stumbled very slightly against her. He turned to her with raised eyebrows. . . and then stopped. Beside them, the two women stood in classic boxing stances, their faces transformed into snarling portraits of hatred. Mari had adopted a similar posture, although she topped hers with a bland expression.

Without a word, the two women separated, edging sideways away from one another. Mari echoed their movements, dropping Reed’s arm and sliding three feet to his right.