Hunted Dreams (18 page)

“What are you thinking about going into?” Reed asked politely.

Cor sighed. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Al wants me to get a degree in Business Management.” She rolled her eyes. “Whee. I don’t know, though. I like Anthropology a lot, and I’m a mean violinist.”

“You play the violin?”

She clucked at him. “It would be polite to at least pretend not to be shocked. What, spoiled little Broschi girls can’t be nerds, too?”

Reed grinned at her. “In between training to kick ass and dyeing your hair blue, you practice Mozart’s ‘
Violin
Concerto No. 3 in G’?”

Cor’s smile sliced diagonally across her face. “Listen to the big bad ex-soldier, knowing his Wolfgang Amadeus.”

“Not all Black men listen exclusively to hip hop, you know,” he teased her.

Cor cackled at him, and his grin remained. It felt good, this banter, kind of like what he and Jade should have had.

“You know, when you’re not being all surly and judgmental, you’re actually kind of funny,” Cor remarked, smoothing wrinkles from her dark blue skinny jeans.

“I’m overwhelmed by your compliments.”

“You do have a bit of a sarcasm problem, though.”

“So they tell me.”

Cor leaned forward till only a foot or so separated them. “They kinda hate you, huh?” she asked, fluttering hand taking in the rest of the household.

After a minute, his smile remaining half-heartedly on his face, Reed slowly replied, “Definitely the women. I think Paul only slightly despises me.”

“I’m not normally one to advise. Okay, I am, but anyway, I can’t help but think you might earn their love and kindness if you weren’t so, you know, reserved. Well, and self-righteous.”

Reed’s smile broadened a fraction. “You’re assuming I want everyone to become my best friends.”

Cor shook her head at him, mouth pursed. “Crazy thought, right? Who’d want affection and acceptance? We’re your people, Reed Jayvyn. If not us, who else?”

Reed stared at Cor, with her long, earnest face, devoid of makeup and other artifice, and her carnivalesque hair. He thought he might have a candidate for “who else,” but he didn’t think Cor needed to know that. Instead, he said, “Maybe I don’t need a family.”

Cor made an impatient sound. “Okay, you just inspired me to change my degree to Psychology. Who honestly says they don’t need a family? I know you’re alone, Reed, and knowing what you are, I imagine I know how alone you’ve always felt. Why not relax a little bit and let us be your friends?”

Because I’m not a monster.

He left that thought remain unspoken. However, in a rare moment of openness, he answered, “Too late. Whether you like it or not, I already consider you a friend.”

Cor blustered about, tidying papers and muttering about
hors d’oeuvres
, but he could see her tiny smile and feel her embarrassed pleasure.

Chapter 10

The sky shone an impossibly bright cerulean, almost burning her eyes as she soared toward it. She reached the zenith of her ascent and stretched out a hand to embrace the flat, jeweled expanse. A breath later, she fell back, back. She reclined, feet pointing toward the horizon, hair whipping against her cheeks, as gravity drew her gently, lovingly back to the ground.

Katana swung backward in an arch, eyes closed, mouth smiling. Hands cupped her behind and then tenderly pushed her forward again. Once more, she arched toward the sky.

“Nice,” she murmured. At the top of her swing, she pointed her bare toes toward the clouds.

She swooshed back down, hair snapping. This time, when the hands touched her bottom, a voice whispered, “Hey, beautiful” against her ear.

“Reed!” she cried, and dragged her feet through the sand to halt her ascent.

A smiling Reed, wearing a T-shirt and khaki shorts, appeared in front of her. He knelt in front of her as she sat grinning at him in her swing. Before she could ask him a question, throw out a smart-aleck remark, or comment in any way on his sudden appearance, he leaned forward between her knees and drew her against him.

As usual, he smelled delicious and felt even better. His arms warmed her chilled body, his head rested against her chest. She felt his breath against her bare upper arm.

Katana kissed the top of his head.

“I missed you,” he said softly.

She inhaled sharply and nuzzled her cheek against the short, springy curls atop his head. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” she teased a little breathlessly.

“You feel really nice,” he told her. His hands rested on the fleshiest part of her back. She could feel the warmth of his cheek through the thin cotton of her pink (
My favorite color
, she realized with some pleasure), ruffled tank top.

She kissed his hair once again, pleased and slightly taken-aback.

He likes me
, she thought, and smiled.
More, he needs me
. Huh. Sometimes she felt so lost, so aimless, anchored only because she had Reed. Maybe she wasn’t the only one.

She let a few moments pass before deciding to lighten the moment. “You just say that because you got to cop a feel.”

He pulled back from her, smiling. “Did I ever tell you you’re disturbingly creative?”

Katana stared for a minute, confused. When Reed gestured to the world around her, she lifted her head and took a good look.

The landscape resembled some kind of Dali-esque painting, complete with physics-defying visuals and over-saturated colors.

“Wow,” she said, taking in the nearby, bright yellow teeter-totter that balanced atop a distant mountaintop; the monkey bars made out of warped, lanky, artificial—or very still—monkeys; and white, origami cranes, elephants, and frogs that dangled on wires from the sky. Shadows, black and spongy, crawled along the dusty ground.

“Is that a face in the clouds?” Reed asked, pointing.

Katana squinted at it before nodding. “No one I know.”

He continued staring. “I think,” he said very slowly, “that might be my sister.” He met her eyes, then, and shook his head.

“Um, she’s pretty,” Katana offered. He smiled crookedly at her. “Tell me about her.”

Reed lowered himself to the monochromatically tan, powdery sand. Katana joined him, and they sat with their bare feet touching.

“Her name is Jade,” he said. “She’s five years younger than me. She’s technically my half-sister; we have different fathers.”

“And you heroically saved her from drowning when she was a young lass,” Katana recalled.

Reed nodded, smiling. When he didn’t continue, she pushed against his foot with hers. “Name and age, check. What does she do for a living?”

His smile blew off his face, and the lines of his mouth, usually so soft and expressive, sharpened into straight lines. “She hunts Leeches,” he said.

Katana sat back in confusion. “But . . .” She hesitated, not wanting to hurt his feelings further. But when had she ever held back with him? This wasn’t a place for evasions and circumspection. “But you’re a Leech,” she said.

Reed inhaled through his nostrils and nodded shortly. “I am,” he said.

“Um . . .” She threw her hands up in confusion. “You’re going to have to help me out. I don’t even know what questions to ask. Is she a Leech, too?”

“No,” he said. “Jade is a Hunter. So was our mother.”

“How’d your mother have a . . . non-Hunter son?”

“Males are Psychics,” he reminded her. “No one knew what I’d be when I was born, although the Clan hoped I’d be a Psychic, of course. My mother’s name was Aya, daughter of Uma. She was a powerful woman, a strong Hunter.

“Thirty-two years ago, she went on a mission with a few other Hunters. They intercepted a group of Leeches and, as the story goes, all got separated during the fight. My mother pursued a Leech—some young, White guy, she said—for quite a while. When she finally caught up with him, he somehow got the upper hand. He hurt her pretty bad. Before leaving her to die, he raped her. You can guess where the story goes from there.” His face was hard, his eyes distant.

Katana pressed a hand to her mouth. “You’re . . . So. Um, and your mother decided to, you know . . .?”

“Not abort me?” he asked, eyebrows raised. Katana cringed but remained silent. “My mother was an intensely religious woman and didn’t believe in abortion. Lucky for me, I guess.”

Katana scooted on her bottom toward Reed, overlapping their outstretched legs. Once she passed his knees, she grabbed his hands. “How awful for her,” she said. “But thank god she made the choice she did.”

He stared at her for a long moment while their fingers intertwined.

“What happened when the Clan found out?” she asked quietly.

“They didn’t till I was fourteen. I always knew the history of my birth. No one let me forget. I hoped, though, that I would end up developing some Psychic powers. Come puberty or so, I did—just not the ones we all hoped I would.”

“What did your mother do?”

He took a deep breath. “My mother was amazing. We lived with the Clan then, and she knew she had to tell them. They threw me out.”

Katana gasped and sat back, mouth agape. “What the heck kind of good guys are these?” she snapped.

Reed smiled at her and stroked his thumb over hers. “The line between good and bad isn’t always so clear.”

“Well, it is in this case. That was just cruddy to throw you out because of your genes. You should have drunk their nightmares in retaliation before you left.”

Reed stared at her for a moment. She wondered if she’d offended him, but then he leaned forward, laughing. “You should have been there to beat them into submission,” he teased her, but she saw, to her surprise, how touched he was. Was he used to everyone assuming he was evil because of his heritage?

“Have sword, will travel,” she growled with mock ferociousness.

She was pleased when she didn’t even have to prompt him to continue. “Jade was nine by then and obviously a Hunter. Her father, Gregory, was your everyday Psychic. The Clan wanted my mother, Gregory, and Jade to stay . . .”

“Those jerks wanted them all to abandon a fourteen-year-old boy?” Katana gasped.

“The war between Leeches and Clan dates back centuries, maybe more. The Clan exists for only one purpose: to save humankind from Leeches. I understood that, even if—”

“Baloney,” Katana snapped. “Leeches are soul-sucking demon bugs because they choose to trap sexy, brilliant women in nightmares, not because they were born that way. You’re a good Leech, a good person. I can’t believe those sanctimonious idiots would abandon you because your psychic powers were slightly different from their other boys’.”

He stared at her. She stared back, defiant. He continued looking at her. Finally, she pursed her lips and said, “Okay, sorry for interrupting you. That was rude. And insulting your homies.”

A minute passed. Then, he surprised her by laughing again. “They’re not my homies,” he told her. Sitting before her, solid and beautiful, smelling like toothpaste and shampoo, she watched as his image flickered briefly. Her hands closed briefly over air before he materialized again, expression unchanged, apparently oblivious.

Ah.
She took a breath. “Are the Leeches your homies?”

He shook his head. “You’re the second person today to ask me that. I don’t have homies anymore.”

“Since your mom passed away?” she asked gently.

He nodded.

“She left the Clan, didn’t she?”

“She did.”

“Did Jade and your father—” When his expression darkened, she quickly amended, “I mean, your stepfather. Did they leave, too?”

“No. Gregory and Jade both wanted to stay.”

She gentled her voice even further. “How did your mom pass away?”

Reed shook his head once again. “She stopped fighting Leeches when we left. She was an amazing Hunter, fierce and strong and so smart. Jade’s a lot like her. It’s a little ironic that she died from a pulmonary embolism when she was just fifty-two.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “How old were you?”

“Twenty-four. It doesn’t seem like seven years.”

“I know,” she soothed, rubbing up and down his arm. He flickered again very briefly, and her fingers passed through the space where he used to be. “No!” she whispered, but he was already back.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.

Her eyes warmed and blurred. Wordlessly, she shook her head.

“Hey,” he said gently. “I’ve been babbling. Tell me how you’ve been.”

“I want to know your story,” she insisted. “Do you see Jade anymore? Your stepfather?”

“Gregory died four or five years ago. He was quite a bit older than our mother. He died from diabetic complications. Jade . . .” He smiled slightly. “I see her very rarely.”

“Did she . . . how did she take it all? You being thrown out, I mean.”

Reed shrugged. “She was born and raised a Hunter,” he replied, as if that said it all.

Stars
, maybe it did in his world.

“How does she, you know . . . What does she think of you?”

“Well,” he paused, and his features blurred very slightly.

Katana reached for him before realizing it was only her tears that had made him appear to shudder. Still with her, then, at least for now.

“We spent her first nine years together, but she’s now twenty—what? Twenty-six, I guess. She’s a Hunter and I’m a Leech.”

“How about Jade and your mom? Did your mother get to see her?”

“My mom was a strong woman. She went to visit Jade from time to time, even though she never told me about . . .” He stuttered into insubstantiality once again. It lasted no more than one or two seconds, and then he continued as if unaware of the interruption “. . . it. I know she missed Jade, but she never mentioned any regrets or expressed any anger. I was plenty pissed enough for the both of us.” He offered her a wry smile. “When she died, the Clan buried her in their cemetery. I was . . .” Flicker. “. . . furious but too poor to offer an alternative. I didn’t attend the funeral, even though they offered to”—His lips compressed briefly— “‘suspend the banishment.’”

“Whoa,” Katana said. “Was that when you started thinking about joining the Leeches?”

Reed drew back in surprise. “Naw, girl. Didn’t I tell you why I’m h—” He flickered for a moment, a fluttering pattern of shadow and light. —ere?”

“You know,” Katana said quickly, before he strobed into nonexistence. “I’ve been thinking about the dreams with you in them. They’re the least scary of all my nightmares. Most of them even have large chunks of time where we can talk. It seems kind of weird, right, when the rest of my dreams are so intense, so upsetting.”

Reed’s eyes shone with sympathy. When he flickered this time, she saw the landscape behind, through, him. “I think it’s because my subconscious knows the worst part of the dream is when you go away. It’s worse than monsters and . . . car crashes and such.”

He wavered in front of her, and she felt the tears in her eyes. “I forgot to tell you,” she said quickly, the words crashing into each other. “I think I grew up near downtown L.A., maybe even live there now. I think I’m a college student, or maybe an ex-student. I seem to have a lot of memories about LAU. And my best friend is Angela Rodriguez or Reyes.”

“What’s go—” Flicker. “—ing on, Kat?”

“You’re about to leave me,” she near-whispered. “I hate this part. I
hate
it.”

He flashed in and out of focus. He said something to her, but she couldn’t make out the disjointed words. She rocked forward and kissed him, and his lips pressed against hers before disappearing. Pressure, nothing, feeling, absence. Within ten seconds, Reed had vanished from her surreal landscape.

Katana sat back, feeling for the first time the sand gritting under her legs. She saw her sword, lying a few feet from her, and clenched her fist, wishing she could swing it as something, stab and jab and slice until red drowned the sand.

For the first time in a while, sitting in yet another fantastical landscape, she let herself cry.

His watch read three thirty-eight a.m. when he pulled his ancient truck into the all-night gas station. Reed snatched a few quarters from the ashtray and strode to the payphone. He’d noticed sometime during the drive that he’d forgotten to slip on his shoes. The pavement slapped coldly against the soles of his feet.

The telephone receiver felt grimy in his hand. He grimly jammed the quarters into the slot and dialed a number. It rang four times before leading to voice mail. “Sorry to miss your call, but I’m probably busy making out with Elijah Wood . . .”