Tangible (Dreamwalker) (14 page)

The radio wasn’t there. Right—it was broken. Ignoring the fiery claw marks along his chest, he groped for the sword and bandolier he’d doffed when he’d piggybacked Maggie into the dreamsphere.

They weren’t handy, either. Could anything go half-right?

Yes. The vampire atop Maggie burst into a shower of dust. Maggie clambered to her feet, breathing hard. A stake trembled in her fist.

Zeke vaulted over the loveseat. As soon as he hit the floor, he shoved the sofa toward his attacker. The bandolier and sword had fallen on the other side—at the feet of the angry wraith.

Maggie hefted her stake and prepared to leap onto the vampire hovering over her brother.

“Maggie, get the hell out of here!” Zeke patted down his cargo jeans for throwing stars, stakes, guns. Whedon vamps took wooden stakes or head removal. Hard lump, left hip. Fumbling, he came up with a small dagger.

He flipped it, hard, into the vamp’s face as it rounded the loveseat. It howled when the blade struck. Zeke kicked the loveseat into the beast, knocking it on its ass.

Which wraith should he kill first? Hayden groaned weakly and batted at his attacker. The vamp punched his head, rendering him unconscious.

“Leave him alone!” With a yell, Maggie rushed the vampire who had her brother. The monster whirled and caught her before she could connect.

Its claws curved around her shoulders. She cried out, flailing. The vampire lunged for her neck. She shoved her stake into its mouth like a bit. Zeke reached his weapons and jerked a stake out of the bandolier.

Before he could use it, the first vampire leapt on his back. It pulled the lacerated flesh of his chest, its rank breath choking and hot.

He lunged forward and tackled the other vamp and Maggie anyway, driving his stake into the monster from behind. The pile of human and wraith went poof. One less wraith. They all thudded to the ground, the monster on his back clinging like a monkey.

Maggie struggled beneath him, her eyes wide with terror. The vamp sank its teeth into his shoulder. Blood splattered Maggie’s cheek.

“Get off!” She smacked at the wraith—ineffectively since she was pinned
.
The bloodsucker hadn’t gotten a good latch and Zeke wasn’t in danger. Yet.

But his team’s continued absence wasn’t a good sign. Lillian should have been back with the ECT by now.

How many wraiths had the mystery dreamer manifested? How many conduits had been opened? Was this a purposeful attack on his team?

Maggie cursed and fought, trying to reach the vamp on Zeke’s back. He heaved off her, somehow pushing himself upright despite the wraith gnawing on him like a dog on a bone.

She rolled to her feet too. In her fist was her can of pepper spray.

“Shut your eyes!”

Holy crap, this was not happening.

Zeke twirled and ran sideways, away from the capiscum, and slammed through a glass balcony door. The vamp took most of the crash, snarling. Zeke reached behind him and wrenched the monster’s head as its teeth ground into his flesh.

His fingers encountered the dagger hilt. He shoved it deeper into the creature’s face. With a wail the wraith released him and scrabbled at the knife.

Maggie advanced, her pepper spray aimed straight ahead. She reached the balcony. “I’ll spray it, you stake it.”

“Damn it, Maggie, back off with that shit.” The balcony door had been wooden. He yanked a piece free, the remaining shards of glass slicing his palm. The vamp skittered away until its yellow gaze lit on Maggie.

The creature charged. She shook the can and depressed the button. It sputtered itself empty, the thin stream not even reaching the vamp.

With a kick, Zeke whapped open an unbroken balcony door just as the creature reached it. Panes shattered. The wraith’s momentum shoved the door and Maggie into the room. She stumbled on trash and hit the floor. It tried to follow her, but Zeke was on it in two steps. With all his might, he drove the broken piece of door into its heart.

Pow.

He lunged through the powder cloud—all that remained of the vamp—and hoisted Maggie off the ground. “You’re crazy. What were you thinking?”

“Your neck, your chest.” Her hands fluttered over his wounds. She grabbed a T-shirt from the floor and pressed it to a puncture on his shoulder. Blood, his blood, dotted her pajamas, her robe, her face. She lifted a red-smeared hand to his cheek. “You should have worn your vest.”

He gave a pained laugh. “Considering you ditched it the first minute I turned my back, I can’t argue with that.”

“Do you need a doctor?”

“No. I just need a minute.” He was light-headed. Blood loss, relief or Maggie’s proximity? Without stopping to consider how stupid it was to kiss her when another wraith could materialize at any minute, he threaded his hands into her hair and captured her lips.

She met him halfway, pushing herself closer. Her taste, coppery with his blood, set his heart pounding. His wounds throbbed. So did the tangible, tightening between them until it felt like they could join with their clothes on.

Someone cleared his throat behind them. Zeke broke free.

Lillian and Rhys stood in the doorway, holding swords and the ECT, every bit of them dusted with wraith sand.

“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes,” Lillian chided him, “without you getting snacked on by vampires and kissing your students.”

Zeke didn’t fall for Lillian’s bait. Not enough time to quip. “There’s a second dreamer. Someone’s got to geolocate her. She’s close. I didn’t have time to triangulate.” Locating a dreamer responsible for a manifestation required a combination of quick checks into the dreamsphere and matching whatever scene the scanner had logged with a physical location.

“We figured that out too.” Rhys safeguarded the doorway while Lillian hustled to Hayden’s bed and opened a first aid kit. “HQ noticed the manifestations as part of the routine scan and discounted them because we’d just collared somebody in this area. They put two and two together when we reported in. They’re sending backup.”

“The signature had no tag.” Zeke held the T-shirt against his wounded shoulder. “Could be a neo, but with a targeted flow of wraiths like this, it’s probably an assault. It’s definitely past first manifestation.”

“An assault?” Rhys asked. “Who the hell would use wraiths to come after us?”

“A psycho,” Lillian growled, busy with Maggie’s brother.

Maggie’s shoulder brushed Zeke’s arm. In a low voice, she asked, “That Karen person?”

Zeke felt a moment of dread at the thought, but there was no way. He knew Karen’s signature too well. “Not possible.”

“Shit, Zeke. Take my radio and call the team.” Rhys’s posturing from earlier disappeared; he might have aspirations, but his first concern—everyone’s first concern—was saving lives. “Or do you want me to go in?”

“No, I want you fighting. I’ll send Mel in. He’s sneakier. I’ll have someone contact Karen’s guards, just in case.” Zeke caught the walkie and flicked it on, giving orders. With the manifestation site this close, a scanner would only need five minutes, tops, to triangulate.

“What’d you kill in here?” Rhys asked, accepting the radio from Zeke with only a tiny scowl at the blood smears. “Out there we had vamps and zombies. Bunch of ’em. I lost count.”

“We had three from Maggie. Whedons. They came through while we were tranced.” Zeke wobbled a little and Maggie slipped under his arm to support him.

“I felt them use me,” she said, her voice rich with disgust. “I hope I never experience that again.”

“There were no other conduits linked to Maggie,” Zeke confirmed. He verbalized the logistics, partly for Maggie’s benefit and partly for his own. His understanding fuzzed at the edges as blood loss—he was pretty sure it was blood loss—affected him. “I bet her only manifestations this whole time have been the Whedon vamps. The manifestations during Lillian’s shift were Maggie’s plus the other dreamer’s.”

“Five Whedons that time,” Lillian confirmed from beside the brother. “The rest Nosferatus.”

“Lillian and I assumed the second conduit was Maggie’s, but it wasn’t.” Zeke pressed the dirty T-shirt to his shoulder again, since the chest lacerations had slowed to an ooze. “The mystery dreamer, during our confusion, has continued to send manifestations after us.”

“They do seem to be trying to eat us more than the average wraith,” Rhys said. Zeke noticed the big man was no longer unscathed. One side of his leather jacket had been sliced and diced like taco lettuce and a cut bled on his hand. “Either they’re starving or you’re onto something.”

“If it’s not Karen, who would attack you?” Maggie asked, her voice thready. “Do you often get attacked like this?”

For a moment, nobody answered. If the Somnium had enemies, they didn’t know about them. Renegades were few and far between and limited to runners who didn’t want to be involved with the organization, monetarily or otherwise. Outside of research and development, manifesting wraiths guaranteed a short trip to the Orbis and a long chat with a curator.

A chat that never ended.

Attack by wraith was just not done. Alucinators weren’t stupid.

“No,” Zeke said slowly. “It’s too hard to get away with it. We’re all tagged so our signatures are recognized instantly. This is someone without a tag.”

“Look, I agree this is irregular. But another neonati in this vicinity popping up active the same night as Maggie? Not even Sean would agree that was statistically likely.” Lillian ripped open another gauze pad, tossed the wrapper to the ground, and dabbed another of Hayden’s wounds. “The thing is the only people I know who can disguise their tags are—”

“Curators,” Rhys and Zeke said at the same time.

Zeke cursed. It was too huge to conceive of, too ridiculous to be true, but it was possible. A curator could be responsible for this. “If the curators want to kill us, what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“Maybe they’re testing you,” Rhys suggested.

“They’d be testing us all, not Zeke alone.” Lillian taped gauze in place, her expression lethal. “If I could get two minutes alone with that bastard in the terra firma, he’d think twice about messing with us.”

“Down, girl. He’d listen to you now as well as he did in Harrisburg,” Zeke told her. “He was one cold son of a bitch.” The curators didn’t have names, or didn’t choose to share them.

Rhys shifted, his bulk blocking the doorway. “We should call HQ. Demand to know why the curators are trying to take us out. This could be huge and we’re smack in the middle of it. Wait. Can we trust HQ or should we assume they’re compromised?”

Zeke didn’t appreciate the tinge of excitement in Rhys’s tone. “If the curators want us dead, we’re about to be dead, Rhys. We can’t use this to advance our careers.”

“From what I understand, your superiors need you—all of you—to be doing what you do.” Maggie waved her hand around the room. “They have no reason to attack you. The simplest explanation seems to be another newbie like me. Someone who’s been having nightmares. Someone who’s had a tragedy recently. I have lots of neighbors, but I don’t know them well enough to say who...” Her voice trailed off.

“The coincidence,” Rhys argued, obviously clinging to delusions of political grandeur. “We need to pursue this with HQ, but carefully.”

Maggie gripped Zeke’s arm. “Oh my God. Could it be Hayden?”

Zeke stiffened as the possibility hit him. Lillian, too, froze to stare at Maggie. He could tell the possibility was hitting her just as hard—ton of bricks hard. Rhys rubbed his chin.

Maggie let go of Zeke, who steadied himself, and leaned over her brother. “He’s been sound asleep this whole time.”

“Everyone in the city is asleep right now,” Rhys said doubtfully. “It’s four-thirty a.m.”

“But not everyone’s going to cluster manifest their nightmares right under our noses,” Zeke said with disgust. A neonati having to tell him and his field team how to do their jobs? If this was true, he had no intention of putting it into the report. “I can’t believe we didn’t guess. No, I believe it ’cause it’s par for the course for our team. We always get the freaks.”

“Maggie, you’re a genius.” Lillian indicated the man on the bed. “Your brother’s been manifesting wraith after wraith while we blamed you. All the factors are there, as much as they are for any neonati. I guess it can run in the family. And he’s at least an L3.”

As if on cue, Hayden mumbled in his sleep.

“I wonder about Allyson,” Maggie said. “I have a number for her we could try, but she never answers.”

“Before we go chasing your sister, we’ve got to wake your brother’s drunk ass up,” Zeke said. “That’s the quickest way to confirm whether or not it’s him and he doesn’t need to be in the dreamsphere without a mentor.”

Lillian patted Hayden’s face lightly. When that had no effect, she snapped a popper from the first aid kit under his nose.

He twisted away, groaning.

“Come on, sleeping beauty. Rise and shine.” She shoved the popper toward his nostrils again.

His eyes—the same brown as Maggie’s—cracked open.

His gaze fell on Maggie first. “Hey, Mags. I feel like crap.” His deep voice creaked with disuse. “Who are these people?”