Quicksilver Dreams (Dreamwalkers) (34 page)

The officer tipped the bag sideways. As though in slow motion, out tumbled an achingly familiar heart charm that made me draw in breath.
No
,
no
,
no more!
I couldn’t handle all this volatile emotion. No. I didn’t want to know anymore. I’d had enough! Please!

My chest tightened. My breathing grew heavy. My vision grew tunneled. Blood rushed loudly as I tried to deny what I could see with my own eyes. It couldn’t be.

“Is that all?” Talon asked skeptically, dismissively.

“What is that?” Miara asked, picking up the charm. “It’s familiar to me. It must have significance. I’m sure it does.”

“He’s an animal. What significance can anything have?” Talon said with disdain.

“Taylor, are you okay?” Ryder was grasping my arms. “You’re like ice.”

Tell them
,
Taylor.

“Dreya?” I whispered shakily, hearing her voice in my head and suddenly knowing just who it was. Like a baseball bat to the head, dream memories slammed into my mind. For a few precious moments, it was like I couldn’t breathe, trying to gulp at the air like a fish out of water. The picture called to me, and my eyes were soothed as I saw Dreya’s profile on the edge of the desk. “Dreya, is that you?”

“My grandmother?” Ryder asked. “How do you know her?”

“Is she talking with you now?” Miara’s face was a study of shock.

Tell them.
This is your part to play.
You understand this truth now
,
don’t you?

“No. Please.” I whimpered as panic boiled over, and I shook my head, rejecting the evidence before me. “Why?”

“What is it,
lin’de?
” Ryder pulled me around to face him, looking concerned. “What’s wrong?”

You must.
You know this.

“No!”

Your mother will be in danger if you don’t do this.
You don’t have time to lose.

Silence stretched. Once again, all eyes were on me, with varying degrees of awe and confusion. I covered my face with shaking hands and felt on the verge of a breakdown. My world was being ripped apart, the pieces put back together in a random collage that was leaving me reeling, without any sense of self or foundation.

Taylor?

“Yes, I understand,” I whispered, and the other proverbial boot hit the ground with a magnificent, booming echo. The truth—the sick, awful truth of the charm, and its very telling meaning—hit home with a vengeance.

“Taylor, what’s happening? Why is my grandmother talking to you?”

With tears welling up in my eyes, fearful of what this news would bring, I looked back at the charm. Pulling my arms free of Ryder’s grasp, I gently took it from Miara with shaking fingers and cradled it in my palm, holding it before him. “My mother told me it’s a love charm. The hearts represent each married partner, and the pearl in the center is the newborn child protected by their love.”

Ryder’s eyes turned sharp. He went from having an expression of bewilderment to staring at me with fierce intensity, his look telling me that he was remembering the last time I’d shared this with him. He knew there was something important to this exchange, something he just wasn’t seeing.

“I’ve heard this.” Miara’s eyes snapped to me sharply. “When a child is born, a Brausiian child, this is the gift from the warrior to his life mate. I saw one of these. Long ago.”

“During the movement for peace?” Ryder asked.

His mother nodded, narrowing her eyes on me.

Tears spilled down my cheeks because I felt the significance. I looked up at Talon. He remained coldly impassive, staring down at me, but there were shadows there as he waited. I recognized them, now that I’d seen them on Ryder’s haunted visage.

“I was in his mind. His wife and child were killed in what he thinks of as an attack by the Sunan, and he holds you all responsible. He wants revenge.”

“But how would you know the symbolism of the charm?” Miara asked quietly. I sensed a core of strength in her to match Ryder’s and Dreya’s. They were good people just trying to survive. We were all survivors, but that didn’t mean we were all going to be friends, especially with the information I was about to share.

I looked up at Ryder and held out my arm, my mother’s bracelet glinting under the lights. Shiny and bright, the love charm that always brought tears to my mother’s eyes when she looked at it hung there. Clearly, the two charms were identical.

“It looks like my dad was a Brausiian warrior. He gave this to my mother when I was born, and before she disappeared, she gave it to me.”

Ryder’s face transformed almost as soon as he understood what I was saying. He stepped away. Angry dismay curled his lip. “What the hell are you saying? You don’t know what you’re saying. You have no idea about this.”

“Your mother received this charm from your father? You are Brausiian?” Talon’s tone was low and menacing. He pulled his mechanical device from his pocket. To do what with, I didn’t know.

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Ryder ground out.

“She’s our enemy,” Talon responded contemptuously. “Isn’t it obvious in the way she was arguing for the animal’s life?”

“I haven’t done anything to you,” I protested on a choked sob. My lungs squeezed with emotion, but I still backed away from him. “How could I be your enemy?” But it was so clear now.
The animal.
I was just poor white trash. I was trailer park. I was alone.

“Talon,” Miara said sharply. “Leave this.”

“We must protect ourselves! Our children!” Talon turned to the young soldier and commanded, “Make a cell ready. Take the prisoner.” The young soldier turned to me and grasped my arm with a firm grip.

“No!” I yanked on my arm to be free. The soldier’s fingers caught on my bracelet, and it broke. All of the charms scattered like confetti. I gasped. For several seconds, the silence echoed through my mind as I stared at the lifetime of dreams so carelessly scattered on the floor.

“No, no, no.” My anguished whisper came from the depths of my soul. The pain burned in my chest as I saw the representation of my mother’s heart and spirit scattered like rubbish.

Ryder growled through clenched teeth, backhanding the young man. He flew back on his ass. Ryder roared, “Do not touch her!”

Miara’s voice rang sharply. “You forget yourself, Talon. It’s not your place to assign imprisonment. Our laws shepherd the way, and as the judiciate, I can say that she is free to go. She is not a citizen of this world and has done nothing wrong.”

“Miara!” Talon scowled down at her, his expression so reminiscent of Ryder that my heart ached just seeing it. He was just another lost, angry male.

“You’re wrong, Talon. In this you are wrong. She put her own life in jeopardy to save our people. Be at peace. Come. Let’s give them a few moments to collect themselves.” Miara led the way out with the young soldier following. Talon exited reluctantly. A look of disdain shadowed his face.

Ryder didn’t wait long. Breathing heavily, his face flushed with rage, a crazed look in his eyes, he beheld me from a distant place and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know,” I cried insistently through my tears. Letting him see the truth of my heart and mind, I opened to him completely. I wanted him to stop hurting. He’d hurt enough. We’d all hurt enough.

“How could you not know?” Disbelief punctuated his words. “How could you live for more than twenty years and not know where you come from?”

Desperation edged my voice as I laid heart bare and explained. “I don’t know anything about my father. My mother never told me. She left before I could ask her. My aunt doesn’t know. My grandmother is dead. There is no one who can tell me. I c-care about y-you, Ryder. I w-would never lie to you!”

“I know you wouldn’t lie,” he said heavily, standing with his hands braced on hips, his shoulders so broad and strong, the sight of him achingly familiar in that stance. His anger was draining, but the moment was a ten-ton weight on his back.

“Then what’s wrong? I thought this was...precious...to you.” My breath hitched on the word as my throat choked, unable to finish the painful thought that maybe I was just now too flawed for that to be true anymore. He’d overridden my defenses and made me crave his care and the feeling that I was connected to this life in wonderful ways.

“That’s not the point.”

“Not the point? What is the point? I’m the same person I was last night and this morning. I’m that s-same p-person that you found to b-be precious. Please, Ryder, listen to me! Hear me!”

I was begging for love. Pleading, just the way I would go to bed at night, crying into my pillow, wishing for my mother to come back. And here I was, at it again! Wasn’t that what this was? It was me being pathetic and small, needing someone, and having that important person turn me away again. My spirit was being crushed, just as I’d known it would happen.

He didn’t respond, and instead turned away. He was rejecting me. My mind cried in protest, wanting to keen with the perfect grief that was wrapping around my heart, but I held it in as the silence stretched between us.

“All my life I have hated the Brausa. I’ve imagined killing them all, torturing them slowly with joy in my heart for all the pain they’ve caused, and to find that you are one? Brausiians are the enemy, Taylor.”

“No...” That statement had sounded so final.

“All my life I’ve sworn vengeance for my people, my parents and my sister. Brausiian animals ravaged her! She was a sweet...child!” His voice broke in memory.

“I know this. I saw it.” I thought of Asily sitting on the blanket and knew that I needed to give that to him.

“What?” He looked to me sharply. “How could you know?”

“I went with you into your dreams last night. I followed you into the grassland to find Asily. I took you to her on the Gods’ plane.”

“How... You followed me? What gave you the right?” he thundered. “Why would you do this to me? That was none of your business! You had no right!”

“She called to me! She wanted me to bring you there! She wanted you to see the truth.”

He bit off a curse and took several deep breaths. “How can that be?” he asked almost fearfully, his green eyes searching mine.

“They blamed you. It was wrong. You knew it then, and you know it now. You protect your family from the truth, hiding it away, even from yourself, but it makes you boil with resentment. They blame you and you allow it. There is no blame! This was the path she was meant to walk! I’ll show you.” Asily’s energy touched mine, letting me know she was encouraging this. It was time for Ryder to forgive himself.

Closing my eyes, I brought forth the woodland scene where Asily was smiling while sewing dolls’ clothes for her little sister, and Ryder was hiding, unable to shoulder the weight of everyone’s pain, his young voice confessing that he was no longer liked by his father. I pictured Asily giving him hugs, smiling her mischievous smile, telling him she was fine and that this was all part of a larger plan.

“No.” Ryder closed his eyes, his head tilting back as the images slid across his mind.

“She called to me and I answered. She wanted you to stop torturing yourself.”

“Taylor.”

“Your family has torn itself apart with grief. That’s what hurts her.”

“No,” Ryder whispered gruffly. He turned away, his head hung with emotion. “You took me to her. I saw her. She was beautiful. I...remember.”

“She wanted your family to heal.”

When he turned back, his eyes were bright with moisture but gave nothing else away. There was nothing he could say.

“I’ll take you home.”

Home? This was it? Brief hope had sprung in a secret place in my soul that giving Asily back to him would change things, make him see that I was still...me. It hadn’t. I was his enemy.

The anger, the hot feeling of betrayal, was surprising. I’d done nothing wrong. I’d put myself out there, ripped open my heart to show him my sincerity, and it hadn’t mattered. I didn’t really matter. That was the bottom line.

I closed my shop, reinforced my mental walls and let my head drop. There was nothing more to say.

Yes. It was time to go home.

After all, I was part animal to him now.

You know there is more left to do?

“I know, Dreya,” I whispered. “It seems there is always more to do. Please be safe. Goodbye.”

We’ll meet again
,
love.
Hold on to your strength and courage.
You received those traits from both your mother and your father.

A dry sob threatened. In a choked voice I said, “Thank you.”

With new resolve, I bent to pick up my mother’s charms. They were truly precious to me. The thought of leaving even one behind was abhorrent, but I knew I wouldn’t find them all.

After a moment of watching me crawl, Ryder bent to help, and I snarled at him, “Don’t touch her things,” which caught him by surprise. I grabbed what I could see immediately and held the charms tightly to my heart as I stood.

“Taylor...” Ryder looked at me but was unable to speak.

“Take me home,” I said coldly.

Chapter Sixteen

And though I was heading back from another planet, which was weird enough to be able to say, my surreal, wild ride was not yet coming to a halt.

First, I tried to request Cynthia for the ride back, but Ryder insisted on taking responsibility for me, which was all he said to me as I gathered my clothing and my purse, not wanting to leave anything of me behind. I even offered to give him the blasted mylunate off my toe, but with a carefully blank face, he just looked at me in silence and told me to hold on to it, given the danger of the situation I was in. The transfer itself was less dramatic, as I was expecting the strange suffocating sensations. I worked hard to remain passive in his strong arms as he clasped me during the process.

I thought I might have felt a whisper of his lips on top of my head, but I figured it was just fanciful thinking, and because thinking about never being close to Ryder again was making my lungs seize and my body want to expel the ball of hurt through a crying jag, I had to push it all away. No way was I going to give him that. Not again.

It was late morning when we began our ride back through town. There was some traffic, but the morning-rush-hour nightmare traffic had diminished, which allowed us to cruise comfortably along the Pacific Coast Highway, smelling the salt air. It only took forty minutes of travel to get back to the apartment. To keep from remembering how good he felt as I wrapped my arms around his waist, and how good he smelled, I started trying to solve my more immediate problems. I was determined not to focus so much on how tied I felt to a guy who wanted nothing to do with me.

Everything was up in the air. Someone was trying to kill me, which meant I couldn’t go back to my apartment and would likely have to do some crawling to get my aunt to let me stay with her for a while. As far as I knew, I still had my job, so that was good. Maybe offering to pay my aunt’s bills for the next six months would persuade her to have a heart.

Because it was a weekday and most of the residents had gone to work, parking was wide-open. We were able to park the bike right outside the gates. It felt surreal being back on Earth, where everything was familiar. I looked across the street at the apartment complex and had a fleeting thought that Mrs. Myrtle had had to walk to school on her own the last few mornings. I hoped she was all right.

Stiffly, I took my helmet off, and keeping my eyes on the task of scooping the straps neatly back into the helmet, I said, “Thank you for the ride, and for protecting me. I really do appreciate what you’ve done for me.” Carefully trying not to touch him more than necessary, I swung a leg off the bike, wanting simultaneously for this moment to be prolonged and for my immediate escape, so I could start my self-medicating crying jag. I know. It didn’t make sense, but nothing in my world made sense anymore. Everything that I’d thought I could count on was altered.

Ryder got off the bike and took his helmet off, running his fingers through his black hair in a purely masculine gesture. I turned my gaze away, remembering how soft his hair had felt in my grasp and desperate to forget. He took both of our helmets and put them on the bike before turning to me. Clearly something was on his mind as he scanned the immediate area.

“It’s not safe for you to be here.” He was looking around the neighborhood rather than at me.

“Yeah, I figured. I’ll work it out.” I nodded, hugging my waist.

“How?” He confronted me dead on, his cool green eyes watching me steadily.

“Don’t concern yourself. I’ll be fine. I’m not your problem.” I said this evenly, firmly, up until the last word, when my voice cracked and I had to take a calming breath. How could anything hurt so much? It was like my whole body needed to weep in great gusts. There was an open wound bleeding profusely in me, and I needed to see to it, but he wasn’t letting me escape.

“Thinking of going to your aunt’s?” he asked calmly.

“Maybe I am. It’s none of your business.”

“The abusive one?”

“Better that than dead.” I smirked.

“That’s not acceptable,” he said grimly.

“Who are you to judge?” At least with her, I wouldn’t get blindsided.

“I’m the guy who’s going to protect you.” He stated this in firm tones.

“Whatever, dude. Have a nice life.” I spun off and pushed through the security gate, for once glad to see that someone had propped it open with a rock, because I didn’t want to have to dig my keys out. Of course, as soon as I went through the gate and started up the stairs, I realized Ryder was right behind me, which was making me furious and excited at the same time.

Dammit!

“What do you want?” I snapped, stopping on the stairs. We were eye level with each other, since he was a couple of stairs below me.

“Pack a bag. You’re staying with me.”

“No.” I snapped this almost gleefully, enjoying denying him the ability to feel like I was his responsibility. No more do-gooding with me. He’d had the opportunity to care for me and had squandered it, looking at me like I was shit on his heel. His parents, too. They could all go take a flying leap into Dysfunctionland. To remind us both, I coldly stated, “I believe your last words were that I was your enemy.”

“It was a fucking shock, Taylor. I didn’t see it coming.” His voice was low, but I could sense a tone of rawness. He was in as much emotional upheaval as I was, but that was his problem. He didn’t want my help. He didn’t want me.

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“Fine. Pack a bag.”

“What good will that do? You’re right next door.”

“I’ve got a place in Venice Beach that’s a more permanent residence when I’m here.”

“So the apartment you moved into next to mine was only so you could keep a better eye? Spy better?”

He remained quiet a moment, staring at me with a serious, unreadable expression. “That was part of it.”

“Part of it.” I realized he was being deliberately evasive and that he wasn’t going to tell me the other part yet.

“Yeah, well, screw that. I’ve always taken care of myself, and that’s not going to change now.”

“You tell him, sister,” one of the middle-aged frat boys called from his front porch on the first floor, not too far away. Realizing we’d been providing a floor show for the frat boys had my face heating up. It was barely noon, and the guy was already nursing a beer with his roommate.

“Dude, shut up.” His roommate scowled, not so far gone yet. “That dude’s fucking huge.”

I realized Ryder was giving them a menacing look and that he was in a state of mind in which one more comment might set him off, and then there would be bloodshed. Inevitability. Again.

“Dammit! Come with me.” I grabbed Ryder’s arm. Reluctantly, he allowed me to drag him to my apartment door, thereby saving frat boy’s life. I managed to dig my keys out and was glad that at least my apartment hadn’t been broken into again. It was still fairly well cleaned up, but it was freaking hot and stuffy, and something had gone south in the kitchen.

The trash was rank. It needed to be taken out. And seeing Ryder in my stank, stiflingly oppressive apartment, when I knew he was used to so much better, and when I knew that he thought me beneath him, was enough to just deflate me.

“Leave me alone. Just let me be,” I whispered plaintively. “Why can’t you just do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m tired of being your job. I don’t want to be your job. I’m my own responsibility.”

“Taylor, you’re not just a job,” he said quietly, releasing a long breath of air. “I need to know you’re safe.”

“Why?”

He looked at me steadily. “Because someone’s trying to kill you.”

“I’ll take care of myself.”

“Not while I’m here.”

“Why?” I needed to know.

“Do you always need to question everything?” He said this with some irritation.

“Yes! I do! People who are close to me seem to want to fuck me over all the time, and you’re no different.”

“That’s bullshit!” he growled, scowling at me.

“Then tell me why you need to be here!”

“I don’t know!” He prowled the room and muttered again, “I don’t know. I don’t understand it. It’s...you’re inside me...somehow.” He paused in front of me, reaching a hand out to grasp my waist. “Come with me. Let’s solve this together, and then maybe we can talk?”

No
,
no
,
no!
There was nothing to talk about! But the hint of vulnerability in his pale green eyes and the warm familiarity of his deep voice—part of what made me feel connected to him—were my undoing. I could feel my resolve crumbling. I’d felt so sure before, but the longer he stood there, so proud and strong, reminding me of what we’d gone through together, protecting me to the point of putting his life on the line for me, the less I could tolerate seeing him walk away and the more I wanted to cling.

I was going to agree to go. The idea of being apart from him stung so painfully. I’d never been so foolish over a man before, but I just couldn’t separate myself from him. This was going to be my greatest mistake to date, because I was making it knowingly. I was that stupid female on the talk show who said “Because I love him” when asked why she kept going back to the bastard for more pain. But the difference was Ryder wasn’t a bastard. I knew he was a man of integrity, which was maybe why this hurt more.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

He released his breath. I imagine that he’d figured I’d put up more of a fight, but truthfully, I was scared and unsure of the outcomes. The bottom line was, I did trust him with my life, if not my heart.

“Good. Let’s get this done. The sooner we’re out of here, the better I’ll feel.”

My thinking was a little frazzled, and I did my best to grab a couple of work outfits and my war chest of cosmetics, which equaled a small case. I grabbed a shower and changed into summer clothes, feeling like I was burning up in the pants and blouse I’d been wearing on Te’re. In no time, we were back on Ryder’s motorcycle, heading for the coast, and I secretly allowed myself to indulge in the pleasure of resting my cheek on his strong back. I wished things could be different, but they weren’t. My father had been one of the enemy, which I wasn’t ready to think about just yet.

I would need to think about it soon though, according to Dreya. I closed my eyes to better focus my thinking. Somehow, something really terrible had happened to my father, and whatever it was had caused my mother to spiral into depression and out of reality. So how would I find my mother after having no contact for more than thirteen years?

The air cooled as we got closer to the beach, which was welcoming. Ryder pulled into an alley, parked behind a building and shut off the motor. He held out a hand to help me dismount, and I took it, ignoring the automatic warmth that fluttered in my gut whenever we touched.
Nothing good old antacid wouldn’t fix right up
, I told myself firmly.

Ryder took my helmet from me to strap onto the bike before unstrapping my sports bag and carrying it for me, leading me through a back entrance to an elevator of an all-white building.

“Sy Clark shares this place with me,” Ryder explained briefly, pulling his keys out in the elevator when it stopped on the second floor. “You’ll like him. He’s a laid-back kind of guy. He’s the tech guy on my team.”

“How many on a team?” I asked more to keep my mind on the details and off of how masculine and sexy Ryder looked as he stood in the corner of the elevator, watching me.

“Usually three or four, depending on the situation, but Sy’s a permanent member. Tech guys usually are. You build trust over time. Everyone else gets rotated.”

Expecting to see some straight-laced, maybe even nerdy, FBI-looking individual, I couldn’t have been more surprised. Sy turned out to be more like a California beach native, with sun-streaked, shaggy blond hair and cute dimples in a bronzed, handsome face. He was lounging, comfortably shirtless, in surf trunks amid throw pillows on the couch, and he was playing video games on a huge, flat-screen TV. Very real-looking animated soldiers were engaging in urban warfare, with state-of-the-art surround sound that gave it just that extra “real” effect. I almost felt like I needed to take cover. It sounded like bullets were zinging over my head, which was unnerving.

“Hey, Ryder, hope that’s you, buddy,” Sy called over the sound of sporadic shooting. He’d obviously heard the door open and close, though he hadn’t looked away from his game as he nimbly worked buttons on a control pad. In a darker, deeper, more dangerous-sounding voice, he added, “Slimy motherfucker’s in the tree. Goddamn sniper’s already killed half my men...”

“Watch your language.” Ryder scowled, taking up a position in front of the screen.

“My language?” Sy was still trying to see around him, though his expression was perplexed.

“We’ve got company.” Ryder reached down and hit the power button on the TV and video-game console, plunging the room into sudden silence.

“Company?” Sy glanced over his shoulder questioningly. He saw me standing there, and after a split second of what seemed like surprised recognition, he looked over at Ryder, as though asking a silent question. Ryder seemed to give a barely perceptible nod. Sy quickly stood. The entire exchange happened in only a few short seconds, and was that a devilish look that briefly crossed his face? They were definitely doing some kind of silent man speak that I wasn’t supposed to understand, which made my brow knit. I didn’t have time to think more on it as Sy approached and turned on the full force of his charm. I have to say, I liked his energy immediately.

“The beast arrived with beauty.” He smiled winsomely, his dimples deepening boyishly. “Nice to meet you.” His bright gray eyes couldn’t help doing one of those purely male inventories of my daisy dukes and tank top. They warmed appreciatively during his quick scan, though he was definitely putting out more of a friendly, brotherly vibe than an interested-male vibe.

“I hope you’re not suggesting I’m a beast.” I offered a friendly smile.

Sy gave a quick bark of laughter. “Hardly. Brains and beauty. She’s a keeper, Ryder.” He winked, taking my hand in a warm clasp between his own.