Tangible (Dreamwalker) (7 page)

In his experience, women like that were worth the effort to coax into bed. Well worth the effort.

She probably felt a similar pull toward him. She, however, wouldn’t understand it was false. The two of them in bed together, touching, becoming close, sharing each other’s minds—bad idea. Tangibles were erratic and inconvenient, and their usefulness was debatable.

When they reported to HQ tomorrow, the vigils would be annoyed Zeke hadn’t done as ordered. They were the seven ranking alucinators in the North American division, after all. They were used to being obeyed. There was a remote possibility they’d drag the Orbis into it, though the curators rarely got involved in division politics. In the end, the important thing was everyone would be safe, and Maggie’s potential could be harnessed for the Somnium.

She might think she wanted to remain on the outskirts, but fate had a way of coaxing high-level alucinators into active roles. Even the selfish, cowardly ones got sucked in, and Maggie didn’t seem to be selfish or cowardly.

Were Maggie and Lillian asleep? Half of him wanted to trance out and see if he could find them. Help Lillian. Be closer to Maggie. But that was the tangible talking. He should sleep. It wasn’t his watch until three a.m. and he needed rest. His team didn’t expect more wraiths to show up, but it was standard procedure with a neo. Post guards. Just in case.

Guards hadn’t been enough in Harrisburg.

Neither had he.

That’s why Maggie needed to be with Lillian.

Accepting the situation, he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep. Normal sleep, not the dreamsphere, else he’d be too tempted to look for her.

The vampire held her down. Squeezed. Its mouth dripped saliva as it bent for her throat. She could sense how badly it wanted to burrow its teeth in her, open her veins, drain her dry.

Maggie struggled but her attacker was strong. The last thing she remembered was Lillian holding her hand and promising she’d be safe. She tried to call for help. Her voice wouldn’t work. Bangs and thumps echoed all around her. Monsters flashed in her peripheral vision—dark wisps, leering faces.

“Maggie, wake up. Come on. Wake up, sweetheart.”

Every atom in her body wanted to do as that voice commanded. But the monster had her, its claws digging in.

Pain sliced her neck. She tried to scream again and couldn’t.

Her body rattled so hard her teeth snapped and she sucked in a huge gasp. She opened her eyes to blackness. Was she alive? Awake? A warm hand released her shoulder and clicked on the bedside lamp.

A man loomed over her. Blond, shirtless, incredibly sexy.

Zeke.

Good Lord. His body. If this was a dream, it wasn’t a bad one.

Except that he was pissed. And holding a sword.

The foggy events of last night rushed over her in a wave. So did her voice, releasing itself from the compulsion of her nightmare. “What’s going on? Where’s Lillian?”

The door slammed open with a bang. Lillian fell butt-first into the room. She howled, leapt to her feet, and sliced the head off the vampire chasing her. It disintegrated into dust with a sizzle.

Maggie screamed.

Zeke raised an eyebrow. “Lillian’s busy killin’ stuff.”

If Zeke was hanging out beside Maggie’s bed, watching the goings on with mild interest, the danger must be under control.

“What happened?” she asked, trying to calm after the repeated frights.

“Vampires.” With one finger, Zeke tilted her chin sideways to inspect her neck. “I don’t see any blood. Do you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine. Was that monster left over from earlier?” Maggie blinked her eyes, which stung for some reason. She raised her hands to rub them and found she was covered in sand. “Why am I dirty?”

Zeke’s lips twisted. “You’re covered in wraith. Sorry, sweetheart. I let it get too close.”

Appalled, Maggie started brushing frantically at her cotton nightgown and her arms. “That’s disgusting. Get it off me.”

He leaned the sword against the bedside table and stilled her hands. His hot skin seemed to cling to hers. Her gaze traveled up his bare arms to his tattoos, his firm biceps, his broad shoulders. Scars on his gorgeous chest. Another tattoo. His nipples were dark, his flesh somewhat goose bumped in the chill air. Golden hair dusted his belly like an invitation to stroke him.
God
.

Jeans rode low on his hips, and his gun belt rode lower still.

“Relax,” he murmured. She couldn’t tell if he meant because of the dirt or because she felt a nigh-irresistible urge to lick his stomach.

Maggie swallowed. “Easy for you to say. You have an awfully big knife.”

“Wraith residue is identical to the soil where the wraith materialized. It won’t hurt you anymore than dirt will hurt you.” He released her and rubbed his arms briskly. “Anybody ever tell you your ground floor is freakin’ cold?”

“Put on some clothes, cowboy.” Lillian, finished with the vampire, wrenched a knife out of the closet door. A cut marred her handsome face and her dark eyes were worried. She’d come to bed in a T-shirt but had since donned jeans and a flak vest.

“What happened in the dreamsphere?” Zeke asked her. Maggie was glad he didn’t put on a shirt as Lillian suggested, because admiring his body took Maggie’s mind off nearly getting eaten again. “Was the swarm too big to choke off?”

Lillian sheathed the knife and plucked another off the floor. “It was insane. Wraith blotches everywhere. I couldn’t link with her and get her signature tagged. Tried everything I could think of. Sorry.”

“Fuck.” Zeke half-turned from Maggie, his brows crinkling into a scowl. “I don’t want to use the ECT on her.”

“And I don’t want you to.” Maggie sat up. Lillian had explained what to expect in the dreamsphere and how a connection with a mentor or the ECT was often the only way to yank a disciple loose until she’d had training.

Why hadn’t Lillian been able to help? The paperwork Maggie had signed had disclosed the dangers of the ECT and she wasn’t interested in experiencing them.

“We’re lucky we didn’t have to use it this time. Thank your tangible for that, even if it borked our original plan.” Lillian fingered the wound on her cheek. “Are you willing to do your part to avoid the ECT, Zeke, or are you going to let the past convince you you’ll screw things up?”

“We—I—could petition the curators,” Zeke said gruffly. “One might take interest.”

An expression crossed Lillian’s amiable face that chilled Maggie to the bone. “Do you want to do that to her before we try everything we can here?”

“Fuck,” Zeke said again, which didn’t answer the question. “Did the team kill the rest of the wraiths?”

“The rest?” Maggie’s stomach roiled with tension.

As if on cue, Lillian’s walkie-talkie crackled on the bedside table. Zeke grabbed it. Rhys’s voice issued from the speaker. “We dusted fourteen vamps. Weird thing, though. There were two different kinds.”

“She was in there long enough for double manifestation. It happens,” Zeke said, looking at Maggie.

“How many wraiths did you get?” Rhys asked.

“Two,” Lillian and Zeke said at the same time.

“Four total, all Whedon vamps.” Zeke picked up the sword. “That’s eighteen.”

The walkie crackled again, which could have been static and could have been Rhys clearing his throat. “Were the ones you killed particularly vicious?”

“Normal,” Zeke said. “Maggie’s awake now. Should be it.”

“More monsters.” Maggie’s eyes began to burn and water. “Because of me. I hope nobody got hurt.”

Zeke spoke into the handheld without taking his gaze off her. “Who’s on sweep?”

“Sean and Chang.” Static drowned out Rhys’s voice, and Zeke smacked the walkie against his leg. Rhys was still speaking. “...a complication. The wraiths ran amuck, and during the fight a witness let himself in the front door. According to his wallet, it’s the brother. He’s drunk off his ass. What do you want us to do with him?”

“Put him in his room. Maybe he’ll forget what happened. If not, Lillian can handle it.”

Her brother had been attacked? Maggie’s heart lurched. “Is Hayden okay? I should go to him.” She tried to kick off the covers, but her nightgown wrapped itself around her legs.

Zeke gestured for her to be quiet with his sword hand, which was pretty convincing. “Hold your horses, Rambo. We’re securing the premises. Rhys, send Hardin and Mel to check the neighbors. Chances are these were clump manifestations but it won’t hurt to be sure.”

“I need to sterilize my cut,” Lillian said to Maggie in a low voice as Zeke and Rhys discussed the monsters. “Do you want to wash up?”

“Yes, please.” She nearly fell off the mattress, thousands of tiny particles hitting the wooden floorboards with a shush. Grit coated the chilly floor. She shook out her gown, brushed off the sheets. “How did this happen? Did I do something wrong?”

Zeke, still on the walkie, gestured at a shadowy figure outside the bedroom. Since he didn’t run it through with the sword, she assumed it was one of his team—not a vampire.

“Not you,” Lillian said. “Me. In the dreamsphere, I found you but I wasn’t able to make you aware of me. That can happen when a neo already has a connection to another alucinator.”

“The tangible with Zeke?”

“That would be my guess.” Lillian preceded Maggie into the master bath. Still holding the knife, she checked behind the shower curtain with a deceptively casual swipe. “We don’t want to use the ECT on you, and the only alucinator who can bypass Zeke’s tangible in order to mentor you is a curator. You have the right to request one as your mentor. They might not accept your petition, but you do have the right.”

The way Lillian said it made it sound like a threat. “What’s a curator?”

“The heads of the Somnium. The entire Somnium. They have no sense of humor and alucinators trained by curators tend to vanish.” She bunched the shower curtain to one side and turned to Maggie. “Zeke’s going to have to take you.”

Maggie didn’t think Lillian was being provocative, but she shivered at the thought of Zeke taking her—doing anything with her. She switched the bathroom heater on high, which didn’t help her particular kind of shivering.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to fall back to sleep tonight anyway.” She helped Lillian find the first aid items for her wound before addressing the residue on herself. It glistened like the white sand on Virginia Beach. The vacuum cleaner was going to get a serious workout tomorrow.

Would she be allowed to clean house? Lillian had mentioned taking Maggie to their base. What was she going to tell Hayden? Would he remember anything?

“You have to sleep.”
Lillian washed her face and slapped
some antibiotic gel on her cheek. “You and Zeke have to complete the initial link in the dreamsphere before he’ll be able to protect you.”

Before he could protect everyone else too. A glance at the bathroom clock told her she and Lillian had gone to bed three hours ago. It seemed like days.

“You all said Zeke’s no good at mentoring.” She sat on the toilet lid and squeezed her fingers together. She had sand in the webbing, under her feet, sticking to her neck. “What if he can’t help me, either?”

“He’ll help you,” Lillian said firmly. “The reason he sucks as a mentor is because of his personality, not because he can’t do the job.”

If Zeke were up to the task, he’d have accepted Maggie in the first place. He was an adult capable of postponing—or ignoring—sexual desires. There was more to this. “I want to know about Harrisburg.”

“A misstep.” Lillian glanced down, poking through Maggie’s first aid kit. Apparently their team didn’t travel with their own. “Nobody’s perfect, Maggie. Don’t concern yourself. If Zeke wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

Maggie knew what she’d heard in everyone’s voice, seen in their faces, whenever Harrisburg came up. “Several of you mentioned it. That seems like more than a misstep. If I need to know...”

“He’ll tell you,” Lillian repeated. “He’s your mentor now.”

Lillian had described the dreamsphere and what training would be like, but Maggie didn’t remember much about the nightmare Lillian had been unable to stop. Greyness. Dark, wispy monsters. A vampire trying to eat her. Chaotic fear and terror. Zeke said he’d already been in her mind once and she had no memories of him.

If she couldn’t recall anything, how could she help? How could she apply her best effort, how could she be of service? How could she do this?

She needed more time—time to digest everything happening to her.

She did
not
need to climb into bed with the sexiest man she’d ever met while terrified, nervous and covered in dirt.

“I can’t stand this sand all over me,” she decided. “I’m going to take a bath.”

Lillian cocked an eyebrow. “Take a shower, not a bath. Don’t fall asleep.”

“I won’t.” Despite her conviction, she yawned. “I’m too anxious to be tired.”

“You’re exhausted whether you realize it or not. You manifested three times in the past twenty-four hours. That’s hard work,” Lillian said with a dry grin.

Maggie yawned again, her jaw cracking. The bathroom had warmed and the bright light chased away nightmares and shadows. “Maybe I’m a little tired.”