Hunted Dreams (2 page)

Reed watched Maricruz’s eyes snap from him to Alberto, although her expression remained frozen into a look of slight concern.

“And this man took you home? Thank you so much, sir. My brother doesn’t always stay out of trouble.” Her large brown eyes stared up into his, emanating sincerity and gratitude. “Can I get you some water or soda before you go?”

“No, no, Mari,” Alberto said from the couch. “I want Reed to meet the rest of the Family.”

Maricruz was silent for a moment before a gentle smile feathered over her face. “Sure,” she said evenly. “I bet everyone will want to thank you.” She glided away from them and into a capacious, well-lit hallway.

Reed felt a chilly wetness on the back of his hand. Looking down, he found the gray dog pressing her nose against him, eyes begging him for a moment or two of attention. He petted the top of her head and ruffled her ears. “Friendly dog,” he commented.

“Mina loves everybody,” Alberto called. “It’s the Pit Bull in her.”

Reed continued petting the happy,
whuffing
dog. Within a dozen seconds, Maricruz breezed back into the room. Directly behind her strode a slightly taller, although equally thin woman who could truly, in all respects, be described as “white.” This woman, somewhere in her forties, had Northern European white skin, hair bleached into a short and messy mass of platinum, and eyes the color of murky dishwater. A pace or two behind her glided a shorter man composed almost entirely of curved lines. With his rounded lips, his parenthetical stomach, and gently sloping, shaved pate, he looked like an artist’s rendering of organic humanity. A smile already curved his bow mouth and crinkled his bright blue eyes.

“Who are you?” the older woman rapped out.

“Reed,” he answered shortly. “You?”

“Quina Daleth,” she replied with a brusqueness he suspected was habitual. She walked swiftly to him and extended a hand. He shook it.

“We’re pleased to meet you,” the bald man said, smiling easily. He also shook Reed’s hand. “Thank you for bringing Berto home. Mari said he couldn’t ride his motorcycle home in his condition.”

Reed nodded, although this was the first he’d heard of a motorcycle.

“I expect you’d like to head on home,” Quina said, heading toward the door.

“Wait!” Alberto called. All eyes turned to him. “I think Reed might be a . . . relative of ours. I figured we should talk to him.”

Silence, and not a friendly one. One by one, the house’s occupants turned their faces back to him. No one was smiling anymore.

“What makes you think this?” Quina, the older woman, asked him in a tone reminiscent of ice water.

“I don’t think anything,” he replied, shifting his weight to a more balanced stance. “Your boy there dragged me in here.”

“Have you heard of us, Reed?” Mari asked.

“What made you stop to help a stranger like Alberto?” Quina inquired through pursing lips.

“But . . .!” Alberto began, but Quina turned a look on him that sent him slumping with a scowl against the back of the couch.

“I stopped to help someone outclassed by a couple of other fighters. I don’t know or care who you are, and I sure as hell didn’t stop to help somebody just because he’s rich.” He turned and strode to the front door. “Alberto, get well, man. I’m out of here.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Alberto said quickly. Reed halted but kept his back turned. “Guys, he saved me from Gabriel and his woman. Then she said something about him smelling like me.”

Reed shook his head. “I think she meant I smelled homeless, not that you and I are long lost cousins.” God knew his clothes could use a decent laundering.

His hand was on the door latch when Maricruz’s soft, musical voice asked, “Thanks for helping my brother, Reed. You must be a very strong man, right?”

He considered not replying to her non sequitur, but his mother had taught him better than to ignore politeness, especially from a woman. He turned briefly, shaking his head. “I’m a pretty big guy,” he replied. Nodding his farewell, he thumbed the door’s latch and stepped into the damp darkness.

Moooooo.

She blinked and snapped her head to the right. Beside her, a large, serene, brown and white cow stood munching grass. More cows milled beyond her, chewing, scratching, or staring blankly into space. A few gazed at her, eyes calm and shiny brown.

“Hey, girls,” she said quietly. They were cows, incapable of offering companionship, or even context or insight, but they were the first living beings she’d encountered in a long time. She’d take comfort wherever she could get it. The cow to her right flicked her ears, presumably in greeting.

Above her, a cloudless sky shimmered bright blue. She scanned the horizons for the telltale gray ring but found none. Probably not Los Angeles, then. Her bare feet snuggled into cool clumps of grass. She appeared surrounded by a herd of cows, numbering among a few dozen. Beyond their mammalian sisterhood, the grass landscape expanded for miles on all sides, dotted with the occasional bush or clump of scraggly yellow flowers.

She wondered when the boogeyman would come.

Heavy, warm, and stale, the air settled around woman and cows. She drew in deep breaths, feeling surprisingly unsatisfied. Her chest felt dense, although her lungs had only shallowly inflated. Angry, scared, she ground her teeth and told herself to breathe slowly and steadily.

Next to her, the cow gnawed her food. In the silence, the grass crunched loudly between flat bovine teeth.

“What shall we do now, girls?” she asked the cows in a loud voice. In the weird, still air, her words sounded nasal and flat. She was pretty certain her normal voice didn’t sound quite that high and tinny. To the best of her recollection, she spoke in low tones.

Except for the occasional ear flap, the cows ignored her existence.

“Just so we’re clear, I don’t eat red meat,” she said. The news, more than her flattened tone, startled her.

She drew in another breath and could barely tell her lungs had filled. No birds chirped, no flies buzzed, no wind whispered through glass blades. The only sounds were her breath and the gentle crunch of teeth on grass, and they sounded canned, almost as though she were hearing it over a telephone.

A great weight settled on her chest as she breathed slowly, shallowly. Her thoughts grew fuzzy,—well, fuzzier,—and she considered sinking to the cool grass below. As the air grew thicker and the sounds more muffled, she remained standing, prepared for fight or flight.
Or fright. My lungs feel tight. Ha ha.
She shook her head and bit her tongue, trying to remain awake and alert.

And suddenly, she knew. The viscous air, the metallic sounds: all signs It was coming. It was coming, and neither she nor the cows were safe.

Her breath coming in shallow pants, she swayed and put a hand on the nearest cow. Her flank felt warm and solid beneath the woman’s palm.

“We gotta go, girls,” she slurred. Halfheartedly, she swatted at the cow’s haunches, but the animal merely uttered (
Uddered? Ha ha!
) an annoyed sound and switched her tail. “We have to go or It will get us!” she shouted, but her thick words melted only feet away from her. Breath cloyed on her tongue.

She lurched to another cow and swatted her flank, shouting at her to get moving. The cow stared at her, unmoved, brown eyes calm and shiny. She gasped for air, pressed her hand against her chest, and willed her lungs to expand with fresh, clean, breathable oxygen.

I have to save them,
she thought. Her thoughts were tinged with red. She might have shouted again but wasn’t sure. Her lungs ached, her legs wobbled, even her eyes burned.

A blink later, she lay on the ground, staring through tall, gentle grasses at cow hooves. Her chest felt as though someone had planted a boulder in its center. She struggled for breath, but the air felt heavy, almost drinkable.

I didn’t save them
, she thought.
I failed
. Her eyes remained open as she clawed feebly at her chest.

Thank god for fast food value menus
, Reed thought sourly as he sat in his pickup and bolted down his six tiny cheeseburgers. As he’d told that little slip of a girl yesterday, he was a big guy, and as his mother had always said, he had an appetite to match. His current financial situation didn’t lend itself to seven course meals at posh eateries, and he wasn’t sure how long he could handle,—physically or financially,—eating fast food for every meal.

He leaned down to place the final wrapper into the greasy paper bag. When he sat back up, he started at the sight of Alberto’s face pressed against the driver’s side window. Scowling, he rolled down the window.

Alberto was snickering. “Man, I got you,” he said. “You jumped and everything.”

“Can I help you?” Reed growled.

Alberto just grinned. “I kinda thought you’d be here,” he said, gesturing around at the grand scenery inside the parking garage.

“Yeah, you’re a regular detective,” Reed grumbled.

“You’re a grump, bro,” Alberto said cheerfully. “But me and my Family still think you might be one of us, so we’re here to have a little talk.” He backed away from the window and indicated two people standing about twenty feet behind him; it was the older couple, Quina and the bald man, whatever his name. However, he only glanced at the couple before his eyes snapped back to Alberto’s face.

“You look fine,” he said absently, staring through narrowed eyes at the other man. Before he knew it, his worn-out work boots touched down on the concrete. His truck door slammed close.

He stepped toward Alberto, who backed up.

“Hey, that’s what my girlfriend says,” the younger man joked a little nervously. He glanced behind him at the couple and nodded. They started walking.

“You looked like shit yesterday,” Reed said slowly. “And you’re just fine today.” The older couple approached them. Recovering himself, he took a shallow breath, stood a little straighter, and met their blank expressions with one of his own.

“Evening, Reed,” Quina said. It was seven-something at night.

The bald man merely smiled at him.

“Evenin’,” he said, nodding.

“We never got to finish our talk last night. Would you like to have dinner with us while we discuss lineage and other dry matters?” Quina asked smoothly. Her hostility was absent today or, more likely, under tighter wraps. She had dressed beautifully and expensively today in some kind of dark blue pantsuit. In contrast, he and Alberto wore a T-shirt and jeans, while the bald man wore khakis and a cotton shirt with a collar.

“We can talk just fine right here, Ms. Daleth,” he said quietly.

“All right,” she agreed. “I see you noticed Berto’s miracle healing. That’s something we all do in our family. It’s good genes, I guess. We’re never sick and we seem to have a robust capacity for healing. Is this something you’re familiar with?”

Reed didn’t answer.

Although he was pretty sure she remained stationary, Quina seemed suddenly closer to him. “We’re also big eaters. You find you’re always hungry?”

“I’m a big guy,” he said after a long moment.

No one responded for a moment. Finally, still smiling, the bald man pointed at Reed’s truck. “How long ago did you lose your house?”

Reed folded his arms over his chest. “I think our discussion is just about over. Berto, I’m glad you’re feeling better today.” Feeling a sense of déjà vu, he turned and strode away from this crazy group.

“Reed!” Alberto called.

Sighing, Reed turned around. And froze.

Alberto held a butterfly knife to his own forearm. Confident he had Reed’s attention, he winked and starting slicing.

Reed ran toward him, shouting something. By the time he reached the other man, Alberto was laughing and bleeding all over his threadbare jeans.

Reed wrested the knife away from the other man and flung it to the ground. Grasping Alberto’s gaping, seeping arm, he shuddered and gasped as he applied pressure to the deep, but probably not fatal, vertical slash.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he found Alberto smiling his wide, goofy grin. Berto winked.

“Man, what the hell you doing?” Reed shouted. “You stupid ass, we need to get you to the hospital!” He started dragging the other man toward his pickup.

Surprisingly strong for someone his size, and slippery with blood, Alberto escaped his grasp and ran to the other two people. Everyone turned to him, smiling.

Smiling
!

He was so angry, he was shaking. “Your son needs to see a doctor or he might die.” They continued grinning at him. His voice rose in fury. “You think this is funny?”

“Calm down,” Alberto said. “Remember, I heal all fast and furious. I’ll be fine in a day or so. It felt pretty good, though, didn’t it, bro?” Slowly, unconcernedly, he pressed his T-shirt against the gash.

Once again, Reed remained silent. His shaking stopped, his anger deflated. He knew what Alberto was referring to.

“Ah-ha!” the bald man crowed.

Quina stepped forward, away from the men, and stared hard at Reed. After a moment, she nodded. “I felt it in you, Reed. You may have been raised by different parents, but you have far more in common with our Family than either of them.

“Let’s drive back to the house and talk.”

When Reed was fourteen, some wannabe gang members accosted his best friend, Shane, and him. They were really just a group of five high school bullies who wore bandanas and peppered their talk with obscenities. He and Shane knew they were trouble but never regarded them as a serious threat until one day, when the four boys and one girl followed Reed and Shane on their walk home. Amid hoots, hollers, and taunts, Reed and his friend plodded forward in grim, determined silence.

Not far from the school, the group finally approached the duo. Both boys remained silent in the face of the threats and the enthusiastic waving of illegal knives. Maybe if they’d begged or screamed, the group would have left them alone. Probably not.