Hunted Dreams (16 page)

Perhaps twenty-five feet from her, she could see the outline of a face as it appeared between the floor and the edge of the immense bed. His features remained unclear.

She continued scooting back, not comfortable until his face disappeared from sight. After a few moments, blankets pressed up against her right side. Her body trembled in the dim, dusty space. She could see nothing before her. Safe, then. She felt—

The blankets wrapped suddenly around her body.

“Sweet kitty,” a male voice whispered in her ear from behind.

Katana shrieked.

The following day, Reed limped down the darkened hallway toward his bedroom, in too much pain to bother categorizing the hurts. At least he hadn’t managed to break a bone today. For all that he reminded Reed of Santa Claus, Paul was as merciless as any drill sergeant. Reed’s arms trembled from strain and sweat dried on his face.

The only things more beautiful than justice were plentiful food and a steaming hot shower. The food he’d already eaten; the shower awaited him. He reached the end of the hallway and gratefully turned the doorknob to his room.

A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind and yanked him backward. Reed spun around, albeit much more slowly than he would normally, and stumbled to maintain his balance.

Looking cool, dainty, and sweet as a candied flower, Maricruz stared up at him. Her hands rested at her sides as he regained his balance.

“Mari,” he said quietly, his lips still stinging from falling one too many times on his face. “Can I . . .”

She slammed into him, striking with serpentine speed. The force of her movement shoved him back several steps until he struck the door. Reed hissed as the knob dug into his glutes. So quick he didn’t have time to prepare a countermovement, Mari thrust her hand behind his head and pulled him down to her.

Mari’s lips met his with painful pressure. His throbbing lips burst with pain as his teeth cut into them.

“Mari, no,” he murmured, and she snatched the opportunity to thrust her dainty tongue into his mouth. She either couldn’t taste the blood in his mouth or else did not care.

Reed remained stiff and unresponsive against her. Mari angled her mouth against his, nipping painfully at his bottom lip. Her breath spilled over his face in sugary waves.

The doorknob digging into his right buttock, the grinding pressure of her lips against his, the coppery taste of blood on his tongue: the discomfort was trivial compared to his recent workout but somehow hurt more.

Mari shuddered deliciously and pressed herself against him. He realized, suddenly, that she was feeding on his pain.

“Mmmm,” she groaned against him, rubbing her hand suggestively against his groin.

“That’s enough,” he bit out against her mouth. He tried yanking his head upward but realized she exerted bruising pressure on his head, keeping him in place.

“Not quite,” she teased, and bit his lower lip. His mouth throbbed painfully.

“Mari, stop it now,” he snapped, pushing lightly against her.

Maricruz laughed at him and rubbed him, knowingly and obscenely, through his baggy shorts.

“Stop it!” he shouted and used all his strength to shove her away from him.

Mari stumbled backward, feet dancing in an attempt to remain upright, before slamming into the opposite wall.

In the loud silence that followed, Reed stepped slowly, hesitantly forward. He opened his mouth to apologize and then shut it.

Mari looked up at him, her delicate face wreathed in rosy smiles. “See? It’s not so hard to hit a girl, is it, Reed Jayvyn?” she teased. With a twitch of her lush hips, she turned and meandered down the hallway.

Chapter 9

When she walked onstage, she found Reed already there. He stood in the middle of a blinding spotlight, hands in his jeans pockets, posture slouched. Katana’s feet tapped against the floor in her hurry to get to him.

He did not see her until she breached the wall of white that confined him. Approaching him, her footsteps faltered, but then he caught sight of her, and his face tightened into a fierce, almost angry relief. She took two more steps and slammed into him. Their arms twined.

Suddenly, all around them burst a loud “Awwww!” composed of hundreds of voices, something an audience might say during a tender stage moment. Katana couldn’t care less if a continent’s worth of imaginary people watched her reunion with Reed.

Reed murmured something, and she growled, “Please shut up. I really need this right now, okay?”

They stood like that for what seemed like several minutes, although Katana had no way of judging real time in this world. She felt the pressure of tears threaten more than once but did not give in. She didn’t want to waste a moment of his visits in hysterics.

Finally, she pulled back slightly and looked into his face. His expression was sober, tender, and oddly tentative.

“I have a little more info,” she said quietly, and the audience gasped as if she’d revealed something dire.

Reed glanced out toward the invisible audience. In fact, they could see nothing beyond the borders of the spotlight. He nodded at her.

“Sometimes my dreams are . . . memories. Like the Acton house I told you about. And Mandy. This one . . .” She tried not to shudder. “This one took place in a crappy apartment. I don’t know the city. I do know I was a kid living with a married couple, Ken and Tansy Kibbe.”

“How do you spell that?”

For some reason, the mundaneness of the question made her smile. “I don’t know. Tansy like ‘pansy,’ but with a ‘T’? And maybe K-I-B-B-Y.”

“Where was Mandy?”

“Gone,” she said without thinking, and then wrinkled her forehead.

“Okay,” Reed said. “Can I make a request? Next time you have a memory dream, have it take place when you applied for your driver’s license and had to supply all your vital info.”

The ghost audience laughed, the sound like an ocean wave crashing.

“You have quite the imagination,” he told her, nodding out toward the front of the stage. They still clung to one another, albeit less ferociously.

Katana remained silent for a moment before saying slowly, “You know, though, no imaginary dreamscape can match the . . . horror . . . of memories.”

Reed pushed her face against his chest and laid his cheek atop her head. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Her voice was muffled.

He took a deep breath. She could hear his heartbeat, or at least the dream version of it. “For taking so long to find you and get you out of here. For my kind putting you here. For . . . benefiting from . . . all this. Most of all, for you spending all your time being unhappy.”

Katana was silent for a moment. Finally, she poked his stomach and said, “That’s a lot of sorry for one person.”

Reed pulled back to look at her. She could feel the smile tugging her cheeks upward.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked, quietly and slowly.

“You didn’t do any of this,” she said. “I know that. And you’re the only one here trying to help me out. I can hardly remember what it was like before you came, Reed, but . . .” She shook her head, sighed shakily. “I’m really glad you’re here now.”

The audience drew in a collective breath before a wave of “awwww”s crashed over them once again.

“I’m glad I found you,” Reed said.

After a moment, Katana smiled. “You owe me a story,” she reminded him. A few audience members whistled.

Reed nodded. “I do. But before I share the riveting tale of Reed, I need to tell you about all these superhuman groups.”

Katana stepped back and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Sheesh. How many are there?”

“Only two. Well, three, I guess, but two main groups. The Broschi—Leeches—you know about.”

“Superhuman psychic bugs that snack on people,” she said quietly.

Reed winced very slightly. “There’s also the Clan, a group of superhuman beings that fight and kill the Leeches.”

“Sounds like my kind of peeps,” Katana offered. Reed stared hard at her, and she remembered then that she was speaking of his natural-born enemies.

“The Broschi, both men and women, are born with the same talents: strength, speed, healing, and . . .” He faltered briefly and then continued in a flat, matter-of-fact tone: “Psychic vampirism.”

Hmm
. She hadn’t thought of it quite like that.

“The Clan are divided up by sex. The women are Hunters, super strong, fast beings who, at their best, can kick any Leech’s ass. But they don’t have the psychic abilities all Leeches do. Their menfolk do. They’re the psychics. The Hunters are the weapons and the Psychics are the hands that wield them.” His careful tone suggested he was quoting from something.

Katana remained silent for a time, taking this in. Finally, she asked, “So the Leeches have strength and psychic abilities, while the women Hunters have the strength and the male Psychics have the”—she wriggled her fingers by her head—“mental powers.”

Reed nodded.

“Is this a training thing or something everyone is born with?”

“It’s innate.”

Katana nodded. “Good to know. How many of these superhuman beings are there? Where do they live? Why the hell doesn’t everyone know about them?”

Reed smiled at her. “Not many. They seem to be way less than even one percent of the population. They tend to live within enclaves, but there are a number of rogues here and there, those who refuse to live with their kind and pretend to be human.”

“Any, uh, enclaves here in L.A.?”

Reed nodded. “The Clan has four branches in L.A. County and two in Orange County. The biggest one in L.A. is huge compared to most of them at a little over a hundred members. Of course, that includes a few humans here and there who have become Leech targets and want protection.

“The Leeches have six main groups, called ‘Families,’ here in the county. Their Families range in size from five to twenty members.”

“Dang,” Katana marveled. “And no other humans know about you . . . about them, I mean?”

Reed’s lips twisted. “If they do, they don’t stick around for long.”

Katana shook her head. “Big, bad bugs,” she murmured. She was surprised when the audience started booing her. “I don’t think they’re very sympathetic to our situation,” she commented wryly. She crept to the edge of the spotlight. “Hello?”

The space beyond the stage rang with crystalline silence.

“Katana,” Reed warned. She turned to him and found him holding out a hand. Was he worried about her? Suddenly unable to prevent a smile, she walked back and grasped his warm hand.

“Are you a rogue, Reed?” she asked him.

He nodded.

“Yet here you are.”

“Here I am. What about you?”

“Yeah, that’s kinda the question,” she said, the smile still quirking her lips.

“I mean, do you remember any connection you might have to the Leeches?”

She shook her head. “Remembering my name was tough enough. I don’t think I ever knew these Leeches, though. I have a sneaking suspicion my life was eventful enough without soul-sucking bugs complicating matters.” She stopped, hesitated. “Hey, wait a minute. Weren’t we talking about you? You’re so slippery, Reed Ayson.”

He smiled at her, and then his brows creased. “How’d you know my real last name?” he asked.

“I don’t know. You must have told me,” she said, tilting her head.

He shook his head. “I never told you.”

After a moment of thought, she grinned, oddly pleased to be the one with the answers. “Not a great mystery, Mr. Ayson. I hadn’t met you till the dreams, yet here you are, tall and pretty with your mole and your aquaphobia. I even smell your toothpaste when you . . . get near me. And occasionally you smell like spicy cologne. Those are details I couldn’t possibly know. You and I must be working together somehow to represent you as you, well, you know, are.” She folded her arms over her chest once again, enormously pleased with her logic.

Interestingly, Reed smiled and glanced down, almost as if embarrassed. Was it the almost-mention of their kisses?

“Maybe I know everything about you but don’t know I know,” she teased.

The audience gasped as if she’d said something enormously profound—or disturbing.

“You think I’m pretty?” he asked her, trying not to grin.

Katana stared at him for a moment, mouth open. “Stuck in the middle of a nightmare, and you’re fishing for compliments?”

His grin spilled over his face as he grabbed her hand and dragged her back to him. Holding one another, he said against the top of her head, “I don’t know which I find more beautiful. Your looks or your strength.”

Katana barely heard the audience’s reaction through the sound of her own inhalation. She considered her reactions, but everything from “Huh?” to “Really?” seemed slightly . . . inadequate. Finally, she admitted, “I do kind of think you’re pretty.”

Sheesh,
she grumbled to herself, both amused and bemused.
I’m trapped in a nightmare world and making goo-goo eyes at my handsome hero who’s really a villain. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

But she did not let him go, even when the audience’s reaction turned to whistles and cheers.

“I can’t help feeling a little embarrassed,” Reed told her, jerking his chin toward the edge of the stage.

“Really? This is an unusually benign dream. I’m just happy no one has a chainsaw or a dragon.”

She’d said the words teasingly but could feel Reed stiffen against her. “Stop it with the sorries,” she told him. “We’ll get me out soon.” But his reaction reminded her he would be soon disappear and she would have to fight her way through endless, surreal landscapes, hoping for the one dream among dozens that brought her back to this handsome, nice-smelling man.

As usual, she felt profoundly weary.

“I just thought of one more question,” he told her. “Do you know any of the Daleths? Quina, Paul, Maricruz, and Alberto Daleth?”

The names tingled in her overwrought brain. “I think I might,” she mused. Reed drew back in surprise. “Would you say them again, a bit more slowly?”

Before Reed could say anything more, the audience erupted in boos, hisses, and catcalls.

It’s over
, she thought, and felt tears tug once again at the corner of her eyes.

Reed opened his mouth and shouted something, whether at her or to the invisible audience members she didn’t know. Their yells overwhelmed his shout, drowned his voice. He turned to her, then, understanding. He kissed her lightly on the lips.

Boos and wordless cries splattered around them. Finally, she heard a single male voice scream something about canceling the show. She clung to Reed as the spotlight narrowed.

“Goodbye!” she shouted in his ear but doubted he heard her. Instead, they smiled at one another as the radius of the spotlight diminished bit by bit.

A moment later, Katana stood alone in complete darkness and silence.

As usual, Mina met him at the door when he left his bedroom in the middle of the night. He scratched behind her ears, and she sighed in canine ecstasy.

A few hours later, Reed leaned against kitchen cabinets, eating his bowl of cereal, when Quina strode coolly, quietly into the kitchen. Today she wore an ankle-length, light gray dress that echoed her dishwater-colored eyes. She poured herself a glass of cranberry juice and took a sip.

He finished his cereal and rinsed off the bowl and spoon. On his way out of the kitchen, Quina called his name.

He turned politely.

“Next time you’d like to gain entrance to a room in the house, please come ask me. I understand locked doors present a great temptation, but breaking in can become an expensive habit.

“I’ll get a locksmith out here to replace the door hardware. I hope you found what you were looking for.”

He turned and walked out of the room.

Mari dimpled at him and pressed his hand like an old friend. “I hope you don’t mind, but I called Cor and told her to come over a little later today. I wanted to take you out to lunch today. I know the cutest little place in Hollywood.”

He climbed silently into the passenger’s seat of her tiny car.

On the way, Mari chatted light-heartedly, glossing over his silences with her silvery laugh. Weaving through traffic on Sunset, she made a charming tour guide, pointing out various new and old businesses and filling him in on Hollywood gossip and history.

“Last time I was here I saw Keanu Reeves,” Mari confided as they exited the car. She wrapped her arms around one of his. “I heard he lives just up that hill.”

They both ordered double portions and ate ravenously. “Leaving the house always stokes the fire of my healthy appetite,” Mari gushed.

Reed remained silent.

“Do you drink alcohol?” she asked him halfway through their meal.

“No,” he replied.