Hunted Dreams (30 page)

Finally, he seated himself on the edg`e of the beige couch with a sigh that surged far beyond frustration and self-disgust and into something like hatred. Fingertips brushing his thumbs and foot jiggling, he mentally traveled the house’s blueprint. No use. He’d explored every cupboard, every closet of every room.

Think, idiot.

Maybe if he searched the basement one more time . . . He flowed to his feet and took a few steps before halting. He’d torn through it four times at least; searching it one more time would accomplish nothing beyond wasting time and energy.

Sighing through a locked jaw, he walked back to the couch . . . and caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Reed spun to the left, fists bunching. He was far beyond pretending tonight. Twelve or thirteen feet away, some big linebacker of a guy pivoted toward him, teeth bared.

His reflection. Tousled hair, white T-shirt on backward, teeth and eyes shining bright against his skin. He looked like a maniac.

Ooh, scary, man
, he thought as he adjusted the shirt.
Don’t worry, Kat. Your knight in backward armor is coming to rescue you from someplace beyond the looking glass
.

His arm poked through the armhole, and then he stopped. Twice she’d said it, two totally different times.
Through the looking glass.

He padded forward, and his reflection grew ever larger. Studying it with a more critical eye, he thought the edges of the mirror, complete with their pressed tin outlines, just about measured up to the size of a door.

Ah, shit.
Now that he thought about it, her dreams practically screamed clues at him: Confined in a glass box, the hall of mirrors, the importance of windows. What kind of thickheaded ass had to have the message repeated to him over and over before he got it?

He reached the full-length mirror. His face glared back at him.
Damn, man, you got to learn to look beyond your own reflection sometime
, he thought, and reached out.

Katana’s eyes remained closed when the door at the top of the stairs swooshed open. Luisa exhaled in relief and murmured something in Spanish. As the steps descended, however, her soft words morphed into something sharper and louder.

“No, you can’t come. There’s somebody sick in here! You need to go back upstairs right now!”

“Quina told me about all this,” a male voice, as calm and deep as the ocean, said. “I live here now, Luisa. I just wanted to come see her.”

Luisa muttered doubtfully in Spanish once again. Then, more loudly, she said, “The girl is sleeping. You need to go, okay?”

“Just a minute, and I will,” the voice said, growing louder as he neared her bedside. A warm hand brushed the hair from her forehead, and he whispered something too softly to hear.

She opened her eyes, and his hand jerked against her face. His eyes widened as he stared down at her. “You
are
awake,” he said, and grinned at her.

Katana inhaled, held her breath for a moment, and then asked, “Do I know you?”

Tall and handsome, the man exhaled. His smile faded as his lips twitched, seeking the perfect words to explain himself to her.

Her face squeezed into a grin.

He narrowed his eyes. “You teasing me, girl?” he muttered.

“How could I forget such a pretty face?” she whispered, smiling so hard her atrophied face muscles ached.

“You woke her up!” Luisa scolded, scurrying to his side. At Katana’s bedside, she stopped, face scrunching in confusion. “What’s going on?”

Reed turned smoothly to her. “She’s going home,” he announced, and grabbed Luisa’s arms.

Luisa was strong and agile, but Reed wasn’t human, and it took less than a minute to subdue her. Using phone cords, he tied her to one of the room’s two mismatched chairs. He found duct tape among the boxes and used it to secure her mouth.

“Do you know why they’ve kept her here?” Reed asked Luisa as she made rude noises through her nose at him.

“She knows,” Katana said, struggling to sit up. “She lied about this being a hospital when I woke up a while ago.”

He rushed to her side and put his arms around her—but only to help her keep her balance.
Right. God, she felt good: solid, warm,
real
.
A little thinner than he’d expected, but she’d been lying in bed for god-knows-how-long.

“You smell good,” she whispered in his ear. He pulled back a bit, and she smiled at him. “I guess I don’t, huh?”

“You’re perfect,” he said quietly. “Everything about you.”

Reed’s stomach clenched. That smile. My god, he’d never seen anything so dazzling. Beautiful and genuine, like the rest of her. And having her here, all five senses engaged, feeling her body move through the physical world along with his, he thought he’d never experienced reality in such detail.
I’ve been dreaming up till this moment
, he thought.

When had he become any kind of romantic?

“Let’s go,” he said.

To the sounds of Luisa’s grunts and snorts, they helped Katana to her feet. She wore a light blue, stretchy nightgown that ended just below her knees. A wheelchair would have come in handy, but the Leeches hadn’t been thoughtful enough to provide it. He slung her arm around his shoulder and leaned most of her weight against him as she limped toward the stairs.

She smacked his hand away when he tried to lift her into his arms. “I’m not a baby,” she snapped, and then promptly fell. “Darn superhuman bug,” she muttered when he lifted her up the remaining eleven stairs.

Reed’s lips ached from smiling. Katana was alive, awake, feisty as hell, and on her way to safety.

They crossed the threshold and into the dark living room. Just a few more steps, and he would be able to see the front door.

Against him, Katana gasped and stiffened. He felt them, a whisper of subdued emotion. He halted and closed his eyes.

“I told you he’d find her.” Mari’s voice, drifting from directly behind him, sounded gently amused.

“Reed Jayvyn,” Quina’s dry-ice voice tsked. “After all we’ve done for you, you plan on running away with our property.”

He remained silent but opened his eyes. Katana’s face turned toward him, and he stared down at her. Painted silver and gold in the moonlit room, she was exquisite.

Quina gestured to the couch, then offered with glass-smooth politeness, “Why don’t you two have a seat while we discuss what comes next?”

Chapter 16

If she’d expected a dramatic scene, filled with impassioned speeches, shaking fists, and villainous threats of revenge, Katana soon found herself disappointed. Professor Daleth used a minimum of words and gestures to order Reed to deposit his burden on the couch, after which some dainty, perky flower of womanhood drifted into place next to her. Reed sat in a giant, overstuffed chair while Professor Daleth, small smile pinned into place, positioned another chair next to his. Katana slouched against the couch arm, too weak to sit upright on her own.

They looked cozy enough, sitting in a rough circle, staring inward. Within a very few minutes, however, Katana noticed she’d become all but invisible to them. Weak and malnourished, she posed zero threat to these superstrong bug people. Still, would it hurt them to at least pretend they considered her a rival?
Sheesh.

Reed sat easily, his features relaxed. He looked exactly as he had in her dreams, as big and handsome and reliable. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, she couldn’t help reveling in seeing Reed, uninterruptedly, for the past half hour. It was difficult to reconcile the thrill of awakening and encountering Reed with the dire threat of . . . Professor Daleth?

Reed folded his hands over his stomach. “I admit I’m not real impressed by your hospitality.” He nodded toward her. “My only interest in all this is getting the girl to safety. You let us get out of here, and we’ll fade away. I don’t care about involving the police or anything but making sure she’s safe.”

“Do tell, Reed, how did you find out about her?” The young woman, looking as fresh and fragrant as a blossom in her lavender blouse and patterned skirt, asked. “We had a hard time figuring out what you were looking for. It finally clicked: he knows about our little project.”

Reed stared at the young woman for a moment. “How else? I figured it out, Mari. Everyone felt warm and full in this house, some hints you let slip—”

“Bullshit,” Professor Daleth snapped. Absurd as it was, Katana felt shocked by her use of the obscenity. “Everything you’ve told us from day one has been lies, Reed
Jayvyn
. Now that we’ve caught you at your little game, respect us enough to at least offer us the truth.”

Reed, his mouth pursed in disgust, shook his head. “Yeah, we’re real big on the truth in this place.”

“You didn’t just figure it out,” Mari pressed. She alone seemed unaffected by the hostile undercurrents. “A man doesn’t spend hours a night looking based on some hunch. You had to know. Is she why you came here?”

“I had no idea about Katana when I moved in,” Reed said.

“I believe you,” Mari granted, smiling.

“Did you say ‘Katana’?” Professor Daleth asked, eyebrows quirked.

Oh, stars.
“Nice guy,” Katana said, lifting a weak hand to tap her skull. “Not so big in the brains department, though. I told you downstairs it’s ‘
Katrina
,’ mister. Katrina Anders.”

They didn’t even glance her way.

“Why did you come here?” Professor Daleth demanded.

Reed took a deep breath, but his face remained perfectly still. He’d make a perfect poker player. This must be how he managed to keep his feelings cordoned off from these empaths. “You offered me a place to stay after I lost my apartment. I found out about . . . the girl once I was here, and I didn’t so much like it. I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

Mari smiled in delight. “Strictly speaking, you’re telling the truth, aren’t you, Reed?”

Professor Daleth flicked a glance at Mari before focusing once again on Reed. “Except he left out the part about being in touch with the Clan. That would seem to be a major omission.”

Mari chuckled. “Well, except that part, yes.”

Reed’s expression remained unchanged.

“We’ve had you followed every time you left the house,” Professor Daleth explained, smoothing out the creases in her khaki pants. “You’re skilled at evading detection, I’m told, but our members are professionally trained.”

“Do you work for the Clan?” Mari asked, head tilted.

“I hate the Clan,” Reed said, face blank. Even Katana, no superpsychic, could feel the truth in his words.

“Then why ally with them against us?”

He turned to Mari, and his handsome face reflected a soul-deep disgust. Beside her, Mari flinched. “Because the only thing more loathsome than the self-righteous Clan is the sociopathic Broschi. The Clan bathe in their moral superiority till they stink of it, but at least they value the humans they protect. You, with all your fake philanthropy and smarmy talk of symbiosis, you treat humans like nothing more than prepackaged nutrition bars, their lives and life energy yours for the taking.”

A silence followed. 

After a while, Mari, face finally cleared of amusement or coyness, shook her head at Reed. “You never gave us a chance,” she accused.

“I came in here with a lot of prejudices,” Reed agreed. “But don’t for one second sit there, not a foot from
Katrina
, and get all indignant over my bigotry.” He allowed his lips to twist. “You kidnapped a young woman and tortured her for weeks in order to turn her into your own personal buffet.”

“And since the buffet has a name and a voice,” Katana said dryly, “she’d like to take this opportunity to mention she’d like to go home now.”

Professor Daleth’s gaze skimmed her before snapping back to Reed. He was right, she thought. To these Leeches, she had no identity, no presence, no personhood. How could Professor Daleth fake it so convincingly every day at work? How could she, Katana, cautious and reserved as she was, fall for it?

Stupid physical weakness! The irony, corrosive and agonizing, was that had she still dreamed, these beings wouldn’t stand a chance against her. She ruled her dreamworld. Out here, free for the first time in ages, she felt too weak to offer any kind of help to Reed. In fact, she was the only thing keeping him locked into place.

She
hated
being the damsel-in-distress. Reed looked at her, and offered her a tiny smile. “The young lady wants to know if she can go home,” he reminded them.

“The young lady is home,” Professor Daleth replied in a tone utterly devoid of expression.

With a smile as thick and gummy as syrup, Mari perked up once again. Really, someone needed to tell her the honeyed, Southern belle shtick got old after two-and-a-half minutes. “You may have rejected our hospitality, Reed Jayvyn, but we’re still offering it. During the next week, we’d like to keep you and your . . . friend as honored guests in our home.”

“Why? What’s going on?” Reed demanded, sitting up in his chair. Professor Daleth maintained her bland expression while tensing beside him.

“You don’t ask the questions,” she told him. “You just sit nice and neat in your room until we tell you to come out.”

“What about the girl?” he asked, jerking his chin toward her. Their eyes met, briefly and intensely, before he looked away from her.

“Shut up, Reed,” Mari said cheerfully, rising. Her skirt swirled around her shapely legs. “All you need to know is we’ll be keeping her around. I hate to sound like the villain you think we are, but we need to make sure you won’t try to run home to your Clan friends. Now follow me.”

As dawn leaked into the eastern sky, Reed paced his cell. Comfortable, with an ivy-wrapped view of the peachy sunrise, a room he’d called “his” just a few hours ago: nonetheless, a cell. Mari had locked it behind him, a completely pointless insult, since no flimsy door lock could confine him. He remained in his room like a good boy not because of any lock but because they held Katana somewhere else in the house.

A couple of hours later, his agitation wore down enough for him to perch on the edge of the bed. Rational thoughts finally caught up with him. They’d followed him every time? They’d known for weeks about his duplicity, yet they’d still let him plan the fundraising dinner. In fact, hadn’t Quina assigned it to him after he’d met with Jade?

And Cor. He knew she hadn’t lied to him. She genuinely hadn’t known. Did they follow her when she’d tracked him and now knew she’d kept quiet? The last thing he wanted was for Cor to suffer because of him.

Well, the second to last thing.

He’d fucked up but good. The Clan had warned him not to trust the Leeches, not to contact Jade except via code and email, but he’d had to talk to her, tell her about Katana. All those times when Quina had trained him, when Mari had attacked him. Hell, even the bridge “test.” He’d learned as a toddler not to trust Leeches, to respect, if not appreciate, their Byzantine plots and twisted machinations. How had he thought he could somehow fool them all?

What was the ultimate purpose in letting him toil along, smug in his superior sleuthing abilities? Not only leaving him alone but involving him in the planning process of the fundr—

A key scraped in the lock, and Reed sat straighter on the bed and stilled his jiggling leg.

Alberto strode in, stopped, and then stood stiffly, hands in pockets. He did not meet Reed’s eyes.

Neither spoke for a moment. Alberto rolled his shoulders with studied nonchalance. Finally, he spoke to a spot just over Reed’s head. “You didn’t fool me for a second, man.”

Another casualty in this meaningless war. He harbored no illusions about Berto. He’d been well indoctrinated and enthusiastically toed the Broschi line. Still, the kid wasn’t evil, didn’t seem to know about some of the insidious plots hatched by his elders.

Reed sighed. “Sorry, Berto.”

Alberto snorted. “To hell with your ‘sorry,’ Clan lover!”

Reed shook his head. The younger man still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t love the Clan. I just don’t like a few things some of the Broschi are doing. This never had anything to do with you.”

Alberto’s balled hands escaped his pockets. “Except I am a Broschi. And so are you, man.”

Reed inhaled slowly, exhaled. “Yeah,” he agreed.

“All those questions about the Clan, about the Broschi. You knew.”

“Yeah.”
But you knew that, right, kid? I never fooled you
. After a minute, he asked, “Did they tell you this morning about their latest experiment using a human subject?”

“You mean that Katrina girl Mari’s watching?” Alberto met his eyes, briefly, before looking away again. “Quina told me about her.”

Something in his voice prompted Reed to ask, “What’d she say?”

“None of your damn business,” Alberto snapped. “I don’t have to tell you shit. You’d just lie some more anyway.” He took a step toward the door. “I don’t even know why I’m here, except to tell you I, you know, knew.”

“Did Quina tell you . . . what? That Katrina volunteered? That it was some university-supported experiment? That Katrina is a criminal or someone who deserved it?” Alberto glanced at him and took another step toward the door. “None of that’s true, bro.”

“You’re a liar,” Alberto snarled.

“I can’t deny that. But I’m not lying now. Go look her up online. She made honors last semester at LAU. Katrina Ilsa Anders, age twenty-six, born Septem—”

“Man, I don’t care about this Katrina chick,” Berto snapped. “I care about you pretending to be our friend and lying to us. And I just wanted to tell you I never got fooled. I played right along. Had you convinced, huh?”

“Yeah.” Reed sighed. “You totally convinced me.”

“Okay, well, good. I guess that’s all, then.” Alberto hung around for another moment, tossed another glare at Reed, and then backed out of the room. He locked the door behind him.

Katana curled her hands into a ball and squeezed. Her legs had suffered the most from her extended bedrest. Regaining the strength in her hands and arms shouldn’t prove as difficult.

At first, Maricruz played genteel hostess, asking Katana questions about her schooling, her parents, her dating life. After a short time, Katana finally marveled out loud, “My soul-sucking jailer really cares whether I kiss on the first date? What’s next: My favorite brand of toilet paper? This is one of the most surreal moments I can remember, and I just woke up from weeks of dreaming.” She straightened the blanket over her legs.

Mari stared at her for a long moment. Finally, with a small smile, she said, “Reed had a long talk with you when he woke you up.”

Katana smiled back at her. “For the record, I woke myself up,” she offered. “Now, I’m kind of sleepy. Crazy, right? I figure my body needs some real sleep for a change. If you’re still interested in girl talk, you’ll have to wait a few hours.”

Mari rose and, with a brief nod, departed the room.

Katana let her breath out in a whoosh. Maricruz Daleth: Five foot two, one hundred pounds, and scary as hell.

For all the Leeches wanted to squeeze her like a tube of toothpaste for every last dreg of life energy, they sure knew how to keep a guest in comfort. After Mari had escorted Reed from the living room, Professor Daleth helped Katana to her feet and half carried her to this lush bedroom. Its stucco walls painted peach and beige, its stone flooring supporting a huge bed and dresser, the bedroom gently echoed the house’s Southwestern theme. In complete silence, Professor Daleth deposited her on the bed and quit the room. Ten minutes later, Mari had arrived.

And now, in spite of having slept a chunk of her life away, Katana felt profoundly tired. Exhausted, in fact. Still, she hesitated in the bed, slowly curling and uncurling her hands. What if they tried it again? What if, the moment she drifted off, they whispered into the room, IV pole and catheter in hand, ever ready to continue the fun?

Her breath snagged. No more nightmares, no more endless loops of horror and pain. She couldn’t, she
wouldn’t
do it. Heart agitating in her chest, she imagined staying locked in her brain for months, or maybe years, on end, slowly losing her hold on sanity, on reality.

Whoa, whoa
. So what if they did hook her up again? She ruled the dreamworld. With a thought, she could defeat any foe, could change her surroundings . . . wake herself up. They’d done their worst, and she’d not only survived, but she’d grown stronger, become mistress of her world. Heck, she’d even found herself a sweet and sexy guy in the process!