Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (27 page)

“Look at you. What have you been up to?
You’re filthy. Get upstairs and wash up. Lee’s gonna be home any
minute.”

This isn’t his home,
I thought, but I
didn’t say it. I went past her, through the front entry and up the
stairs to my room. My old room. I shut the door.

“What’s he yelling about?”

I turned to Marco, ten-year-old Marco,
sitting on my bed reading one of the comics we’d swiped. “You’re
not supposed to be here.”

“Whatever, dude, he’s not your dad.”

“Mom says he’s gonna be. ’Cause my real dad
doesn’t pay the bills.”

“Lee’s a dick.”

“Yeah.”

“Every time I turn around, you got your hand
out,” Lee’s voice boomed. There was a pause. “If he’s growing so
damn fast, he can go out and get a job!”

“Lousy drunk, just like my dad,” Marco
muttered.

I agreed, but I didn’t say so. I was shoving
him into the closet. Lee’s footsteps were loud on the stairs. He
was yelling my name. “Just stay in here, okay? Be quiet.”

It was hard to stay visible. I didn’t have
control over it when I was really scared, and I was shaking. I had
to concentrate.

The door slammed open and my heart rate
spiked. I knew that I flickered in and out of view in that moment.
I felt it.

Then he was on me, yanking me around,
yelling in my face, reeking of whiskey. I couldn’t understand what
he was saying, couldn’t make myself think of the right thing to say
to calm him down, make him see reason, make him go away. As soon as
he started to hit, I faded out of sight. But he had me by the arm.
He knew just where I was, and using my Talent just made him
madder.

Then he let me go. I opened my eyes and saw
him slide down the wall. Marco went at him again, grabbed him up
off the floor by the shirt, two hundred fifty pounds of angry
drunk, and just started whaling on him. It happened so fast, but
still slow. My mom was crying in the doorway. Blood sprayed from
Lee’s face onto Marco.

Marco was beyond caring.

I grabbed his arm, pulling, begging him to
stop. Lee hung limply from his hand. Marco looked at me, blood on
his face, his eyes glazed, wild, older.

“I can’t believe you, man. I can’t believe
you’d trash our friendship over this little bitch!” He shook Joss
like a ragdoll where she lay beneath him in the dust of the
construction site.

“Just let her go.” I got the words out, even
though I felt like I was choking. I didn’t have a chance against
him. Not a chance of protecting Joss.

He stood, pulling her up with him. Her head
hung down and she couldn’t stand on her own.

“Just tell me why. Why her?”

“You know why. You see it, just like I do.
Maybe you even saw it first.”

“Saw what?”

“Why I love her.”

Marco laughed. He went on laughing as the
world spun.

When I could see again, I stood with Marco
and Tony outside a house. Inside, Joss was screaming my name.

I couldn’t move.

A giant fireball built in Tony’s hand. He
hurled it at the house. It smashed against the siding, exploding
and spreading, the rushing currents of flame meeting others as Tony
threw handfuls of fire at the house.

I finally broke free of the terror and moved
forward, only to have Tony catch me by the neck with his burning
hand. I screamed in pain as he threw me to the ground.

Marco hauled me up to my knees and held me
there. “I kinda want him to watch this.”

Tony laughed as he continued to pitch flame
until there was nothing to see but one great mass of fire.

Joss stopped screaming.

Marco patted me on the shoulder. “That’s
that, then.”

I was still on my knees, choking on smoke
and the tears that ran down my face. Trina was standing above me.
Tony offered his hand to her, no longer burning, and she reached
out to take it.

“Why?” I rasped.

I don’t even know if it was a real question,
or if I was asking her, but she answered. And when she answered,
she spoke in Joss’s voice:

“We’re not like other kids. And maybe that
means that the regular rules don’t apply to us.”

* * *

Joss

“Dylan, wake up!” I had rolled off the
mattress with the end of the dream, but now I climbed back on,
intending to grab him by the shirt front and drag him out of the
nightmare. But he wasn’t wearing one. I remembered pulling it off
of him earlier. My heart was pounding and my head was stuffed with
crazy, but there was still room for
that.
I took him by the
shoulders and shook hard.

He sat bolt upright as he came out of it. I
would have been thrown to the floor if he hadn’t locked onto my
arms. Still, it took a moment for the dream to clear from his eyes.
Part of me wanted to reach up and brush at the tears on his cheeks,
but I didn’t know if it was okay to acknowledge them. In the next
instant, his eyes focused on me and I was crushed in his arms.

“Just a nightmare,” he said, in a rough,
unsteady voice. “Sorry.”

“Like the one you had last week? When you
came to my room?”

He drew in a shuddering breath, let it out
slow. Beneath my ear his heart was thudding like a speeding train.
Like mine. “Yeah. Stupid, huh? Bad dreams, what am I, five?” I
wanted to say something, but he kept going. “I’ve been dreaming a
lot crap the last couple weeks. It stopped when I started staying
here with you, though. Thought I was done with it.”

“The last couple weeks?”

“Yeah.”

“And you haven’t dreamed since you started
sleeping here?”

He pulled back and scrubbed his hands over
his face. “Did I just move into another weird dream where you’re
crazy and repeat everything I say?”

“You might want to consider that
possibility. It’s just…I’ve been having a lot of nightmares too.
More than usual.”

“There’s been some stress.” He laced the
understatement with appropriate sarcasm.

I shook my head. I wanted to know—I was
actually kind of desperate to know more and everything about
him—but I kinda didn’t want to have this conversation, and I wasn’t
sure how to approach it. “Who’s Lee?”

He actually started to scoot away from me
before he caught himself. His eyes were wide and his whole vibe was
you’re freaking me out
. Well, I was pretty freaked out
too.

“Where did you hear that name?”

In your nightmare, I think.
“Was that
real? Was that where you used to live? Did your mom have a
boyfriend named Lee?”

“Was I talking in my sleep?”

“No, you weren’t. I just had a nightmare
about you. About us. And when I woke up, you were having a
nightmare too. And that’s probably just coincidence, except that
there’s been a lot of coincidence,” I was doing that mile a minute
talking thing, “and I know it sounds kind of crazy for me to wake
up and wonder if I was dreaming real things I shouldn’t actually
know about—” –
but it would explain some stuff about you, even if
I don’t want it to be real.

“Okay, slow the crazy train. Yes, my mom
used to have a boyfriend named Lee. But I was having a weird
nightmare and I probably said some stuff that your brain just
incorporated—”

“You woke up here, and there was a note from
me.” I went on to tell it in detail. By the time I got to the part
where he was shoving Marco in the closet, I knew from his
expression that I was right. At the point where Lee was just about
to start pounding on him, Dylan’s expression got really tight and I
cut myself off.

“And then Lee started beating on me, and
then Marco started beating on Lee,” he gritted out. “Yeah. In real
life it wasn’t just like that, but mostly it was. We told the cops
that he’d been mugged. He never said anything different. He dumped
my mom while he was still in the hospital and he never came
back.”

And she still blames you for that.
Bitch.
“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head, like he was shaking off
the memory and the conversation. “Let’s just focus on the fact that
you just dreamed my dream. What the hell?”

Yeah, really.
“Up to that point, I
was just a spectator, you know, like watching a movie. And then
next thing I knew—”

“Marco had you.”

“Yeah.”

“And I let them burn you alive.”

“Okay, I thought we were gonna focus. Trust
me, Dylan, I’ve been in that burning house plenty of times without
you.”

“Okay… So… You got any ideas why we’re
suddenly so in sync?”

“Up until tonight, would you say your
nightmares were your own? I mean, was it all your memories, your
fears, your own material?”

“Yeah, even tonight. I always—” He paused,
and I thought he was going to shrug off whatever he meant to say,
but he continued, “I always fail to save you from something.”

Oh. Well. That sucks.
“That house was
mine. Or, part of it. It’s weird. In some ways it’s the same house
Emily set on fire when I was a kid, and in some ways it’s totally
different. It actually looks like this house that’s for sale—you
know that new subdivision off Market Street? Kinda near the
Lutheran Church? It’s only got one finished house in it.”

“Yeah, I actually know which one you mean. I
can see it now.”

“I only saw it once, and only because Kat
dragged me over there because her parents were thinking of building
there once their kitchen repairs were done. I never really thought
before about why I should mix up that house into my nightmares, but
maybe it’s not even mine. Like not my data.”

“I think Kat’s asked everyone for their
opinion on that subdivision, like it matters. But what are you
saying?”

“I know Tony was there and it seemed like he
was the cause, but that house—some form of it—is always in my
nightmares. And me stuck in there, choking on smoke with the flames
rising—that’s always how it ends. It’s not something you could have
saved me from. It’s mine. But you and Marco weren’t, that’s what
I’m saying. Some stuff’s mine and some stuff’s not. That night you
came to my room, you’d been dreaming. Me too. You’ve been having
nightmares. Me too. Your nightmares stopped when you started
sleeping down here. Me too.”

“So what’s it all mean?”

“A few things, I guess. That someone’s doing
this to us…”

“A Talent.”

“Yeah. Someone who has to be in somewhat
close proximity to us in order to work their Talent—which seems to
be true for most Talents. When we were home, in known locations, we
had nightmares.”

“But we both had nightmares.”

“But not at the same time. That night you
came over, you were texting me, but I was still dreaming. How long
did it take you before you gave up trying to get me by phone and
decided to come to my house—on foot? Long enough for someone with a
car to drive over and start working their mojo on me?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And the fact that when we’re in the same
place, we both have the same dream at the same time…it follows. It
also means—”

“That someone knows we’re here. Our
Nightmare Talent is close by.”

“Or was, yeah. Dammit, I liked it here.”

“Me too.”

“We’ve gotta go.” I unfolded my legs and
stretched, ready to get to work. “We’ll just take our personal
gear. I’ll worry about how to clear the rest of this stuff
tomorrow.”

“Now? It’s just past midnight.”

“This location is compromised. You want to
sleep here when someone that creepy knows where we are?” I threw
his shirt at him.

“Actually, right now I just want to marvel
at how cute it is when you say things like ‘This location is
compromised.’” He grinned at me and pulled the shirt over his
head.

“You disgust me.”

“Oh, bonus points! Nothing turns a guy on
like false disdain.”

I turned my back on him to hide my stupid
grin and pack my books. “I’m kind of shocked that you know that
word.”

“Hey, this—” he was pointing at his face
when I turned around, “not just a pretty—”

The sound of the grate being slid aside
echoed through the tunnels.

“We’ve got company.”

Chapter 13

Dylan

“What the hell were you doing down here in
the middle of the night?” Joss asked Maddy as we jogged from the
deserted parking lot where we’d left the car to the closest
entrance to the mall.

“We were patrolling.”

“Patrolling,” Joss repeated the word in a
voice that made me think she’d rescue Matt from his stupidity just
for the pleasure of kicking his dumb ass.

“Yeah. Matt thought we should help out.”

“Matt needs to stop thinking. Clearly it’s
not his strong suit.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at that, which
pissed Maddy off. “You guys suck. We were totally just trying to
help out and you’re just being nasty.”

The entrance we used, about halfway down the
mall, was a wide, brick walkway with a row of trees down the
middle. The windows on either side of us were dark. When we reached
the end and the mall itself we found it much darker than usual.
Whatever Joss did to the lights it must have been more than just
breaking the bulbs because they still hadn’t been fixed yet.

“Maybe we should call for reinforcements,”
Maddy whispered.

“Have anyone in mind?” Joss asked. “Who’ve
we got in our circle? Besides the four of us we’ve got a mind
reader, a car starter, a girl who can inflict blindness if she
doesn’t fall over her impractical shoes, and a girl who can animate
an army of dolls—which would be awesome if Matt were being held at
a toy store instead of an ice cream shop.”

“We could call the police and let them
actually do their jobs,” I suggested.

She stopped and turned to me, and even in
what little light we had, I could see that her face was grave. “We
could call the police and let them deal with it, but once we turn
it over to them, we’ve got no control over what they do with that
information. Aside from the thing with NIAC, we don’t know how
careful they’ll be or what will happen to Matt. We don’t know if
Marco will find some way to pin whatever he’s been doing tonight on
Matt and just leave him there for the cops. Marco let Maddy go on
purpose. He’s got enough people who have enough power that he
didn’t have to let her get away. He did it because he wants us
there.”