Authors: Erin Kellison
And she was pretty sure that her vision was clear. No illusions. Steve had done something like this—fooled her sight—when they’d just been leaving San Diego.
Steve was…whatever Didier Lambert was.
What the hell were they? And she’d had
sex
with him?
She shook the memory out of her head.
Not now.
Lambert struck Steve, an uppercut to the chin. Steve flew through the air and cracked his spine against a tree trunk.
Since both monster men were distracted, Maisie bolted. Leapt the fence. Ducked into a building and ran up three flights of stairs to watch from a window with a view of the park.
If she had to, from here she could cross to the adjacent building via a trick door. Escape was an easy jog, rooftop to rooftop after that. This was her city. Only she knew how to navigate it. Lambert might think he could usurp her domain, but he wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a toilet here. He’d have to bring the whole city down first, and if he did that, what good would her dreamscape be to him?
His plan to use Jordan to motivate her was the only thing that would’ve worked.
Nothing else. This city was her power, her home, her future.
Below Steve and Lambert whaled on each other with a savagery that reaffirmed that they weren’t like her. Stripped of their pretenses, they hit with a force that would kill in the waking world. In dreams, actions were often exaggerated, but the fight below had real repercussions: the blood that splattered was black and it hissed like acid where it met grass, brick, and metal.
Lambert, decades older, held his own against Steve, but then, Darkside strength was not measured only by muscle mass and youth. Talent and experience were just as potent. And this was Didier Lambert, the original Reveler.
“She’s seen you now,” Lambert taunted.
“She’s seen you, too.”
No trace of Steve’s collected control remained. She could taste the bitterness of his wrath in the air. His anguish. And his relief that she was out of harm’s way.
Which might make some people feel guilty—not her, though. She didn’t even know what
species
the men were.
Their fists were blackening, but not with injury, with condensed power. Lambert doubled over as Steve rammed fist to belly.
Lambert reared up with a backhand across Steve’s jaw.
Because she ruled her city, she knew instantly when someone else crossed the boundary. She couldn’t
see
who it was, but it felt like that driver who’d been in her dream before. He’d come to join the fun and make it two against one.
She was
not
going to feel guilty. Certainly not going to care.
Before the driver could reach the park, she waved her hand forward, a small shoving movement not unlike a kid pushing over a tower of blocks. She dropped a building on him. It crashed down in a white smoke of concrete and brick, steel girders spearing through the rubble.
She’d wanted to modernize anyway.
The driver wasn’t hurt, not really. It was difficult to die in a dream, which is why Rêve was such a commercial success. Only in extenuating circumstances—like Lambert’s nightmares—did a person never awaken.
Steve and Lambert ceased fighting and looked in the direction of the white dust cloud billowing up a block away from them.
“Maisie!” Steve shouted, worry thick in his low voice.
Yeah, I’m still here,
she grumbled to herself. Dreams weren’t supposed to lie, to deceive. If anything, they were revelatory. She’d been falling for him, and never once during that time had he been what he seemed.
You have to go,
Steve thought urgently.
So they could read each other’s minds. The ability was an urban legend about Rêve in the waking world. She wasn’t that surprised they could. Wasn’t thrilled, either.
He wanted her to wake, but she couldn’t leave him here, fighting for her city. Okay, maybe she did feel guilty.
You’ll have only a moment,
Steve said.
Maisie was confused for a second, but then she understood.
Oh, God.
If Lambert woke from the dream first, she was as good as dead because she was vulnerable, asleep in his office, trapped in his house. If she woke first, she’d have the advantage, but only a second of it because she’d take her dream with her, and both Steve and Lambert would wake shortly after.
Lambert kicked out Steve’s knee, taking him to the ground. But Steve controlled his landing and whipped into one of those deft swiping moves. With a lurch, he ended up on top, gripping Lambert’s skull in his trembling, blackened hand.
Steve’s expression was just as pained as Lambert’s as they grappled with each other.
Go now!
Shit.
Maisie gathered her strength and sprang off the floor of the dreamwaters, the urgency of her task like air in her lungs to bring her up…up…up…
Into Didier Lambert’s office, where his freaky eyes were open but the rest of his body was still caught in the heavy languor of sleep.
“Graeme,” Lambert managed to say.
Maisie whipped around to look at her ex-boss.
He was in motion, arms lifting, probably to grab her or break her neck or something equally violent.
“This is your only chance,” she told him.
Graeme faltered, his gaze flicking over to Lambert in an instant of indecision.
Yeah, she thought so.
Maisie rose, leaving her stilettos on the floor under her chair. She spotted a gilded letter opener on Lambert’s desk. She grabbed it as she climbed on top, his globe clattering to the floor. The letter opener wouldn’t be sharp enough to slice, so she went for someplace soft and stabbed down, piercing Lambert’s neck as he was just blinking sleep from his eyes.
With Lambert choking behind them, Graeme dragged her off the desk and toward the door. “We’ll never get out,” he said.
“Steve will be on the other side.” She spoke without thinking, which is how she knew she still trusted him, freaky eyes or not.
Yeah, but they’d have words later. Strong words.
Out the double doors, Graeme’s mean grip got them through living rooms one and two. Maisie drowned a thug into sleep in the outer hall, while Graeme struck the nurse in the face with his fist. That might’ve been unnecessary.
They were already out the front door when shouts sounded behind them. The SUV was gone, dammit. Not that they had keys.
Maisie ran barefoot, Graeme at her side. There was a loud
pop!
and Graeme squealed, but they kept running. The driveway was fucking long, the pavement rough and scorching hot underfoot, sun glaring in the sky. She knew armed guards waited at the bottom. No way she and Graeme would get past the gate.
They slowed as they came around the last bend, Graeme holding his arm, only to find a guard collapsed on the pavement. A little farther they spotted a couple more bodies, their rifles under them or slowly flapping where they were latched on their chests. The guards were all drowned. In the distance, sirens wailed.
Maisie was breathless, but her relief was too great to be contained. “Looks like my sister’s here, too.” Drowning was a particular specialty of hers.
The gate was still closed, but Graeme knew the code to open it. And when the two walls parted, Rook, Jordan, and Steve were waiting.
Steve had his green eyes back, stress lines on his forehead, and for the first time since she’d known him, uncertainty in his gaze.
Maisie was too pumped with adrenaline to think, just went with her first impulse—and flung herself into Steve’s arms.
***
“I stabbed him in the neck.” Maisie was breathless, her voice laced with panic.
Steve had never been so relieved in his life. She’d seen him as he was, and yet not only was she in his arms, but she was hanging onto him for dear life.
Which would make it a lot easier to get her away from here.
“Who’d you stab?” Rook asked as he zip-tied Graeme’s hands.
“We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die,” Graeme chanted as blood dripped down his arm.
His concerns were not exaggerated.
Jordan tried to edge in to hug her sister, but Steve only slightly released Maisie, and with one arm. The other arm had in fact tightened to make up the difference.
“I stabbed fucking
Didier Lambert
in the neck,” Maisie told Rook, though the flick of her gaze included Jordan, too.
“Lambert’s like me,” Steve said to Rook, so that he’d know just how bad the situation was.
“There are others?” Seemed Rook was less accepting than Maisie about Steve’s deception.
“Apparently,” Steve said.
They had to go. Now. The local police’s first responders would be here shortly. FBI and Vegas Chimera soon thereafter—and they weren’t going to believe Maisie’s story, or her defense. Not with her past and Lambert’s celebrity.
“You killed
Didier Lambert?
” Jordan said, dismayed. “I don’t believe it.”
Case in point.
“Believe it, sister. Well, I don’t know for sure if he’s dead,” Maisie answered. “He was still choking when I ran for my life. Chimera will get me off, right? He would’ve killed me if he’d awakened first.”
“Didier Lambert?” Jordan repeated. She seemed stuck there.
“Yeah,” Maisie said. “He’s been kidnapping dreamers and handing them over to whatever kind of creature attacked you and Rook. Raymond Blackman died that way. Lambert can’t dream on his own—doesn’t have his own dreamscape. He wanted to take over mine the same way he’d taken over someone else’s, which just happens to be the horrible evil dream.”
Rook’s expression had gone grave.
Steve felt the same sense of foreboding.
Didier Lambert was a special consultant to Chimera. He’d helped design the Agora. He chaired the International Federation on Dreaming. The situation begged all sorts of terrible questions: How pervasive was Lambert’s influence? Was the Agora as safe as they thought it was? Was it safe for any of them to return to work?
Was Lambert dead or alive?
“You’re going to need that trick of yours.” Rook had come to all the same conclusions.
“You can’t go back, either,” Steve said. “Not until we know.”
“I disappeared once before. I can do it again. We’re running then?”
Both Jordan and Maisie had gone quiet, eyes wide, awaiting the answer.
“Yes,” Steve answered. “Separate ways.”
“Wait,” Jordan said. “What are we doing?”
Maisie was all caught up. “See? I
told
you it was crazy to come to Vegas. I told you Chimera was bad. Did anyone listen? No.”
Rook cocked his head toward Graeme. “Leave him behind?”
“He helped me get out,” Maisie put in. “I think he deserves a chance to run, too. See how
he
likes it.”
Steve nodded at Rook, who stepped over to Graeme and cut his ties with a pocketknife.
“Your chances aren’t good,” Rook told him.
“No one’s are,” Graeme answered. He glanced once at the house, paled, and then jogged down the street. Crossed into trees. Disappeared.
A black and white car turned the corner, passing Graeme, but Steve didn’t let the officers inside it see any of them. When the car got close to the gate, Steve stepped out of its way, taking Maisie with him, and it turned into the drive.
The car stopped there, however. The officers must have seen the drowned guards.
They had not seen the Chimera. Steve shielded them from discovery.
“Why don’t they…?” Jordan began, but Rook pulled her back, too.
Steve knew Rook would explain waking dreams to her later. And soon she too would see through them. It was imperative that she did, if Lambert had survived.
“I’m going to need shoes,” Maisie said.
Steve tugged her closer. “We’ll get you shoes.” He’d get her anything she wanted.
“My, uh, new boots are in a shopping bag in a white SUV.” Her expression was deadpan. “Just FYI. No pressure.”
A smile tugged at Steve’s mouth, his tension smoothing. How did she do that so effortlessly? The world had just gone to hell, and for the first time in his life, he thought he could be happy.
“We’ll meet Darkside tonight,” Steve said to Rook and Jordan.
“Okay, but where is it safe?” Rook asked. “We need a refuge like the Agora.”
Steve knew just the place. He looked at Maisie.
She shrugged, a little smug. Batted her eyes. “And I just happen to have a city.”
***
Chimera Marshal Harlen Fawkes paused at the nurse’s station—why not? They were all so pretty. So busy. Their scrubs were so…mysterious. Take this redhead, for example, with her digital clipboard and her efficiency. Maybe she could take his temperature. He was feeling a little hot.
He leaned forward with one elbow on the counter and flashed a crooked smile.
The redhead looked up at him. “Can I help you?”