Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 (7 page)

That sly smile. “Wouldn’t be my first time.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“You can’t come with me,” Rook said to Mirren. “I have to move as quickly and quietly as possible.”

Rook was planning on tracking Alec Murs, Lambert’s known associate. Tracking was solo work. The waters spread emotion and intent, and gauging from the heat emanating from her, Mirren was desperate and angry to the point of violence. Murs would bolt if he sensed pursuit. Plus, the people who ran shops in the black market paid for privacy. It took years of making contacts and doing favors to be able to hopscotch across the market without whispers spreading a forewarning.

“That’s why I have you in the waking world,” Mirren said. “No matter how far you might go Darkside, you’re mine. Find David. Find him quickly, and I’ll let you go free. I need my son.”

Using Murs to get to Lambert wasn’t such a long shot. Murs was a scumbag Rook had marked last year for assaulting revelers in the Agora. He’d target young women and prevent their reaching the Agora columns for help so that they were at his mercy for the duration of the Rêve. The reveler always woke just as traumatized as if the assault had occurred in the waking world. At the time, Rook had thought it strange that Chimera had pulled him from the hunt, but now, considering Murs’s association with Lambert, it made more sense. Lambert had been protecting his own.

“You need to
hurry
,” Mirren said.

Yeah, he knew. Jordan depended on it, too. He had to find her. The worry was making him crazy, and the idea that his old life had brought this on them begot an anger not easily controlled.

“Shh.” Rook was trying to remember that singular thumbprint that was Alec Murs. In order to tap into the sixth sense he used to track Darkside, Rook employed his five other senses, seeking with breath, touch, and scent, listening to the dense silence of the waters and tasting the amniotic salt with his tongue.

A spark lit in his mind—Murs was reveling at the moment, was in fact some distance
there
. “Got him.”

“Where?”

Rook took another deep breath. The path wasn’t clear. It’d take four, maybe five boundary crosses to meet him. “Patience. He’s in the market. If you’re very lucky, I’ll have him tonight. Do you want me to bring him back here or follow him?”

“Bring him to me. I know what to do.”

Rook didn’t doubt her. She was part nightmare.

He let his vision blur to see beyond what was manifested directly in front of him—Mirren and her Scrape sand and darkness—and beyond that, Chuck and his unhappy reveler. But Rook could also perceive three Rêves surrounding Chuck’s utility dream. Within the first, at least five revelers tangled together—sex, probably, but some fetish not served by the Agora, where adult-rated dreams were very popular. But in the second Rêve, catty-corner from the fetish dream, the revelers were all spaced evenly and were preternaturally still.

A quiet step and Rook crossed the boundary between Chuck’s shared dream and this other one—which was, as Rook had suspected, a labor Rêve. The setting was mundane, a large room with colorful walls and bright air. But men and women were hunched over laptops at desks, chained to their chairs by their ankles—no waking up for them until they couldn’t work anymore. On the screens before them was what looked like programming code. The night shift, as it were.

Labor Rêves had been outlawed by the International Pact on Shared Dreaming, which prohibited forcing dreamers to work while Darkside. It still happened, though, was common in certain parts of the world, and it was an easy way to make money from Rêves. The code the programmers were writing was all data points and, therefore, transferrable to the waking world. Writers often worked Darkside, too.

Several dark heads turned in Rook’s direction a moment before the Rêve’s security advanced—big guys pumped bigger for effect.

“I’m Charles Langer’s runner for the day,” Rook said, holding up his hands. “I only want to cross.”

“Is that Rook?” a rasping voice called out.

Security moved out of the way to permit a short, overweight man to approach. Tate Bagman. His face was flushed, stress lined his features. Tate had never tried to make himself look different from the way he looked in the waking world. He wasn’t a dreamer; he was a pragmatist, and ruthless with it.

“What’s Chimera doing looking into my business?” he demanded. “I’m not on US soil.”

“I don’t care about your business,” Rook said, sighing. “And neither does Chimera, as far as I know. I’m working for Chuck.” Rook had no idea what Mirren’s reputation was in the marketplace. “Get your dime out of him.” A crossing fee.

But Tate’s beady eyes remained fixed on Rook. His nostrils flared. “You doing a little work on the side?”

“Apparently,” Rook answered. “You know anyone’s who’s looking?”

“I can pay you double.”

Double nothing was nothing.

“I’ll consider it,” Rook said. Talent must really have tanked to get an offer so quickly from Tate, with whom he’d never worked and never wanted to. Labor Rêves were a quiet kind of agony. There was no real way to set the revelers free, either. They came from all over the world, some to pay off debts, others sold by their own families into slavery.

“I’ve got a quota to make, Rook. I’ll set you up real nice if you help me see that I do.”

“I’m on a contract right now.” Rook looked at the security again—burly guys with dead eyes. Mercenaries. Used to be that labor Rêves could get by with the right bribes. “Can I pass through or what?”

“How can I contact you?”

“I’m laying low right now. A little trouble at my back.”

“Ah,” he said, as if divining Rook’s situation. “I can help with that.”

Rook smiled. He didn’t think so. “Don’t need help. I need passage, or I’ll find another way through.”

Tate blocked his path. “The Sandman is coming, Rook. We can help each other.”

“I’ll think about it,” Rook said. “Can I pass?”

“Maybe I’ll work out a deal for you with Chuck.”

“You do that. He knows where to find me.”

Rook stepped around Tate, past his security team, and walked the length of the workroom—affirmations like
WORK IS
GOOD
and
WORK WORKS
on printed posters on the walls.

As he crossed the boundary into another dream, he wondered who the Sandman was, then ducked as something huge, flat, and vaguely circular descended upon him.

He dodged the squash—death here would result in a hasty and gray matter–challenging trip to the waking world—and discovered that he was between the mighty four legs of a dinosaur.
This
knockoff was still running? The quality was even worse than Rook remembered. He was in the Jurassic Rêve, except the detail was all smoothed over, the smell more burned toast than Dilophosaurus, or whatever it was supposed to smell like. The air, however, was realistically swampy. It was cheap tourist entertainment, funneling in from behind the T-shirt and fake designer purse booths in most major cities’ Rêve dives. The pirated dream never stopped running, in spite of Chimera’s many attempts to close it down. Lawyers did little better with their cease and desist orders. The hub merely changed locations and then was up and running again. Today it was uncannily deserted, the dinos all taking an interest in
him
.

The yellow park jeep was free, so he commandeered it to drive—bounce, more like—to the nearest boundary, where, before a flock of stressed-out, goose-sized lizards could jump him, he shouldered into…

A classic matte-black null space.

Pinpricks of far-off light provided a calm luminescence. The atmosphere was slightly chilly but not uncomfortable.

He sensed for Murs to get his bearings again—Lambert’s man was close enough now that Rook felt the connection tug, like a hunter’s anticipation for his quarry. Wouldn’t be long now, a couple more Rêves, and then he’d have him.

“Are you still feeling dizzy?” Jordan asked him in that husky and playful voice that seduced him so easily.

The surprise was mellowed by experience—he knew what this was.

Rook turned his head to find naked, beautiful Jordan standing next to him, mischief in her smile. Every inch of her rose-gold body gleamed, from the glide of her shoulders to the soft jut of her breasts. Her belly had the slightest softness around the button, hips just right for his hands.
Ah, sweetheart.
He missed her already. His fingertips itched to stroke, his tongue to taste her. Even his cock was rising to meet the challenge. The longing that rolled over him was excruciating, in part because he knew she wasn’t really here.

Jordan stepped up to him, those heavy lashes lowering a fraction as her always-discerning gaze looked into his soul. He had no idea what a girl like her would find in someone like him, but she dipped her chin and brushed his mouth with her lips anyway. A small puff of minty, hot breath made him smile. The sensory details were so good, so specific, that he couldn’t help but bow his head slightly to see if she tasted and felt as perfect, too.

She inhaled into his kiss, breasts lifting, lower back arching so he could sense the subtle rise of her ass, but no—

He closed his eyes and willed her away. This was an Echo, and a damned good one. She’d been so real that he could understand the lure of paying top dollar to love even a version her, but this Echo of Jordan could never have a
real
conversation with him; it pulled from his memories while the
real
Jordan surprised him with something new all the time. Revelers who’d lost spouses, children, even pets, would spend almost anything to have them back, if only for a while. With this Rêve, they could mortgage their houses to do so.

“Malcolm Rook is in love,” came a voice.

Ah. He could’ve guessed it’d be hers. “Viv.”

The Echo Rêve was very much like its owner, Vivienne Kennedy: expensive and difficult.

“She’s very beautiful.” Vivienne strolled across the Rêve’s blacktop, silver hair swept up in an older-lady’s style twist, deep-purple suit feminine but tough. “Is she your wife?”

Rook bent to give and receive a kiss on the cheek. When he pulled back, he said, “No, not my wife.” He hadn’t considered anything like that, but a woman like Jordan did things like get married, didn’t they? The concept of marriage had always seemed ludicrous to him before.

“Has your mother met her?” Viv was one of few who knew that he’d run away from home when he was a teenager, following the death of his brother.

“Actually, she has.” Rook shrugged. “Somehow I got myself an angel of a girl.” The Echo was still pushing at him, an ultra-intense sense of Jordan that made their separation even more uncomfortable. He
needed
her. He couldn’t lose her so soon after finding her. He didn’t want to be alone again.

“You of all people deserve it.” Viv’s smile suddenly dropped its humor. “Now what is a Chimera agent doing in my Rêve?”

She’d cut him for trespassing, even if she did think he deserved happiness. “I’m Chimera no longer. I’m a free agent on a simple run across the market.”

“What do you mean you’re not Chimera?” Her voice had gone sharp.

“Got into some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Viv was such a
mom
.

He couldn’t help smiling down at her. Even in heels she didn’t reach his chin. “The not-my-fault kind, Viv. Something’s rotten inside the Agora, and it saw me looking.”

“The Sandman.”

Rook made a confused face. “Who the hell is this Sandman I keep hearing about?” Maybe it was a code name for Lambert, whose daughter Mirren could create that binding ribbon stuff out of sand. She probably learned it from her dad. Maybe that’s how he got the alias.

Viv’s mouth turned down. “I don’t know who or
what
the Sandman is, but I’ve heard rumors, which I would discount as hysteria if people weren’t also disappearing. Are you for hire, then?” She looked him up and down—he guessed trying to see through any personal augmentations he might have added to himself. He didn’t bother with that—illusion was too hard to hold Darkside when on the job. “I might be able to use you,” she said.

Vivienne was more dangerous than Chuck, but her operation was clean, however much she benefited from the lusts, grief, and desires of her clients. Her equipment was top-of-the-line. If anyone got hurt, it was because Viv
personally
hurt him or her. No negligence here, either, but she could make a body suffer if it crossed her.

“I’m on a job now, but yeah, if you have work, I’d be interested.” He had to find a way to support himself and Jordan—assuming he got free of Mirren—and Viv was the best option so far. She didn’t do kidnappings or chain revelers to desks.

Again that sense of Jordan nagged him. If he didn’t concentrate, he knew the naked Echo of her would reappear, touching him in the just the way Jordan did, and Viv would doubt his control.

“Then I’ll forgive your trespass,” Viv said. “This
once
, and only because it’s useful to me.”

“What are they saying about this Sandman?” It
had
to be Lambert, but he needed proof.

She waved her hand impatiently. “He supposedly bides in the Scrape, surrounded by nightmares,” she said. “The nightmares, at least, I can vouch for. The black market is infested with them, but they look so real it’s hard to tell which are revelers and which are something else—and then someone goes missing. It’s bad for business. Do
you
have experience with them?”