Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (14 page)

‘
There is this really cool thing
you can do whenever you come across something dark, whether it be a
monster, some menacing force, or whatever. You recognize it as part
of you, and you kind of absorb it back into yourself. It's like
you're a vacuum cleaner running around your dream sucking up what
you don't want there,’ she laughed, the sound easy and light.
Though she'd just said the word monster, and even though the past
four days had given her a completely new context for that word, her
voice hadn't shaken at all. It was yet more evidence that she was
taking this all very, very well.

She nodded at the book in his
hands. ‘Why don't you borrow it? I mean, it's probably not your
thing, but I find it really interesting. You don't need to lucid
dream or even remember your dreams much to find the process
captivating. It's a fascinating aspect of perception,’ she trailed
off, but she didn't lean back in her chair or take another sip of
her tea; it looked like she wanted to add something. ‘Do you
want . . . something to eat? I mean, I've just put
dinner on, and it should be ready soon.’

He paused. There was one
thing he should say to her and that was that he didn't have the
time and he had to go. He had to be careful not to hang around her
too much. While that might not have been a problem four days ago,
he now had to be wary, to keep his distance. She knew who he was
and what he did, and he didn't like the possibility of drawing her
into his world any further. Though he knew that, it wasn't enough
to stop him from nodding his head.

She stood up and turned
towards the kitchen, and he could see that she was smiling. It made
him smile too.

Just as he got up, intending
to go into the kitchen to help her, his phone rang. She stopped
before she made it to the kitchen, one hand on the doorframe, and
then she turned slowly. She was almost wincing, and she shook her
head and laughed quietly to herself as he answered the
phone.

‘
Right, I'll be there as soon as
I can.’ Jack hung up the phone and jammed it back into his
pocket.

‘
You have to go again?’ she asked
as she leant against the doorframe, her long black hair draping
over her shoulders and running down her neck.

‘
Sorry about this.’ He stood up
and pushed his chair back into the table.

‘
It's not really your fault, is
it? Just go and . . . ' she trailed off, her
expression changing. ‘Do what it is you do. Take the book though.
But if you lose it—’

‘
You're going to hunt me down?’
he supplied, tone cheeky.

She arched an eyebrow, her
cheeks warming slightly as she shrugged her shoulders. ‘You are in
the army, I don't fancy my chances.’

He got ready to reply when his
phone rang again. He actually swore this time, taking several steps
away from her as he answered it. ‘Yeah, yeah, look I'll be there as
soon as I can.’ He hung up and turned to see her giggling into her
hand.

‘
Wow, you get a lot of phone
calls.’

‘
Yes I do. Anyway, thanks for the
tea, and maybe . . . ’ he was going to add that
maybe they could have dinner some other time, but he stopped
himself. He tried to heed the voice in his head that said under no
circumstances invite Celeste Cross out to dinner.

He failed.

He straightened up, grabbing the
lucid dreaming book from the table. ‘We'll have to do dinner
later,’ he nodded at her, the words out of his mouth before he
could retract them.

The voice in his head that
told him not to get involved with Celeste was starting to
lose.

She stopped leaning against the
doorframe and playing with her hair. ‘Sure.’

‘
Okay then, I guess I'd better
go.’ He turned around and headed to the door.

‘
See you later, Jack
West.’

He nodded her way, gave a
brief wave, and then left. When he got to his car, he looked at the
book she'd loaned him, running a thumb over the cover
thoughtfully.

She was turning out to be
far too interesting.

Though Jack knew he didn't
have time for a relationship and that he really shouldn't bring her
further into his world, there was something about Celeste that
pushed all concerns to the back of his mind.

Chapter 10

Jack West

He'd been called away on a
mission. It was probably a full week since he'd last seen Celeste,
but that didn't stop him from thinking about her. He'd gone over to
check on her a few more times after the incident, but every single
time she'd seemed fine. She was dealing with it all ridiculously
well. In fact, he felt a little pang of jealousy. It had taken him
months, maybe even years to get over the existence of the Yaoguai.
She appeared to be taking it all in her stride.

There was no time for
thinking about Celeste right now though; he had to keep all his
attention focused on the mission.

They’d been called away to
an abandoned monastery. It had once belonged to the Church. In
fact, up until the '60s it had been a thriving seminary. Over the
years the number of men called to the cloth had dwindled, and so
had the use of the building, until about five years ago, when it
had been abandoned completely. The Church had tried to sell it off,
but there had been no takers; it was in the middle of nowhere, and
the upkeep of the building would put any investor off.

That was why Jack now found
himself winding his way slowly through the dark and dusty
corridors. He made each step as careful as he could so the rubber
soles of his thick, black army boots didn't squeak against the old
stone floors and give away his position. He had four guys behind
him: Gustaf, McDougall, Sierra, and Smith. They were his best team,
and usually formed the core of any strike response he had to muster
in a hurry.

They'd received a call from
headquarters telling them Yaoguai activity had been recorded in
this area. As soon as they'd flown over with a helicopter, their
own instruments had registered exactly the same thing – not just
activity; the monitor was practically glowing with it.

It was a dark night, and
even though there were probably stars shining high in the sky, it
was too over-cast to tell. Though it was summer, the clouds were
low and wispy, clinging to the tops of the trees as if though they
had designs on becoming fog.

Right now, the weather was
the least of Jack's problems though; there was no longer any
electricity coming to this monastery, so even if they wanted to,
they wouldn't be able to turn on the lights. This was not going to
be an easy mission. Base hadn't just told them to come and clear
out the Yaoguai infection. Oh no, they wanted him to capture
one.

Jack hated these kinds of
missions, and it wasn't the first one on which he'd been. Capturing
Yaoguai went against everything he stood for, everything Knight
stood for. The Yaoguai were an incredible threat, and they were
meant to contain that threat. Though he could understand bringing
one in and trying to study it could help them in the long run, it
still sent tension rushing down his arms, back, and
legs.

The monastery had been about
a three-hour chopper ride from Gresham City. Once they were done
here, they were meant to take the Yaoguai back to Headquarters,
which was upstate. It was going to be a very, very long
night.

Jack pressed himself slowly
around the wooden doorframe and into the room in front of him. The
entire monastery was mostly sandstone and wood, and the majority of
it looked as though it was about 200 years old. Over the years,
though, the Church had obviously paid for renovations – there were
all sorts of strange add-ons everywhere, incongruous designs and
architecture. He walked into a room now and his boots met the soft
texture of linoleum rather than stone. It was some kind of kitchen,
and a quick look to his left and right brought rows of old,
blemished wooden benches into view. Here and there, pipes and
cables hung form the wall, where no doubt ovens and dishwashers had
been removed. The entire scene was one of decrepitude and even
under the eerie view provided by his night-vision goggles, the
place felt like it would feel creepy even in full
sunlight.

It was a long room, and
didn't have any windows, just two doors: the one he'd gone through
and one on the other side of the room. There was so much bench
space that he suddenly appreciated how big this monastery had once
been. He'd looked up the file: maybe 200 men had stayed here at the
height of its popularity. That was a lot of mouths to feed. Right
now Jack didn't care about mouths though; he cared about the very
faint scratching coming from the other side of the room.

He froze, bringing up a hand
in the classic stopping motion, hearing his comrades pause quickly
behind him.

He had his assault rifle
pressed to his chest, fingers ready on the trigger. He moved
forward, cupping the muzzle of the gun in his hand and slowly
entering the room.

Not all Yaoguais were the
same. Not all of them were crackling blue electric forms with
tails, possessing whatever classic features one would imagine a
demon possessing. No, there were different classes of them. Some of
them looked like humans, some of them looked like animals, and some
of them looked like a strange amalgam of the two. They also had
different strengths. Your classic animal Yaoguai – though packing a
vicious blow – could easily be dealt with by a properly trained
team. When you were dealing with a composite Yaoguai, it was
slightly different, and when it came to human ones, they were
essentially impossible to defeat. Jack had never heard of a
successful takedown of that class of demon, but he’d heard of
entire teams being wiped out by them. Fortunately, they were very,
very rare. He usually found himself called to an animal Yaoguai,
but Jack felt he needed to be prepared for anything.

The characteristic blue
light that always accompanied a Yaoguai filtered through the room,
and when Jack pressed himself further into the kitchen, he saw that
it was coming from under the doorway on the opposite wall. It spilt
through the crack between the door and the floor, moving around on
the linoleum, exactly as light shouldn't; it was acting more like
smoke, pooling and trickling, twisting in the air in
waves.

He stiffened, his body
preparing for the fight.

As he moved through the
kitchen, his ears started to pick up the sounds from beyond the
door. At first it was just scrabbling, and then the noise of
furniture tumbling over, and then when he reached the door, it
sounded as if something massive, heavy, and vicious was thrashing
around the room.

That was another thing about
the Yaoguai – even though they could pack a punch, and even though
they were equipped with the kind of force you only associated with
massive forms of machinery, they were usually quite small –
relatively speaking at least. Some of them might be the size of a
dog, some the size of a human, some the size of a bear – it didn't
matter how big – they all possessed phenomenal strength. If a
Yaoguai wanted to, it could use its tail to lift a car, smashing it
along the road until it shattered into a pole.

Jack stopped before the
doorway and stepped to the side, ensuring he wasn't directly in
front of it in case the Yaoguai came rocketing through.

He motioned to his men to
take up position, and then he waited. He listened. He wanted the
Yaoguai on the other side of the room before they burst through,
preferably with its back to them. The last thing he needed was for
it to be directly in front of them.

He kept on
waiting.

His boots were shaking from
the vibrations travelling through the floor, caused by whatever the
hell the Yaoguai was getting up to in the other room.

Remember, you
have to catch it
. He
reminded himself.

He had to override every
single one of his instincts that told him simply to dispose of it
on the spot. He had his orders.

He moved. Creeping forward,
he flicked his hand to McDougall, and in a second the giant
Scotsman sunk several shells of his combat shotgun into the door,
the wood splintering forward.

Jack rolled into the room.
Jumped to his feet immediately, instantly locating the Yaoguai, and
moving for cover a split second later.

It was on the other side of
the room, standing on top of a crushed table, its tail flicking
around in the splinters on the ground, like a cat twitching in
anger.

As soon as the door had
exploded, the creature's neck had snapped towards it, its head
tilting to the side, its large eyes narrowing in a snap.

McDougall let off several
rounds, firing not at the Yaoguai but at the table underneath it.
The point was, rather than overcome it, to frighten it enough so
they could get it moving where they wanted it.

It was hard work trapping a
Yaoguai, and it was very easy to stuff up.

Fundamentally, a Yaoguai was
made of energy. If you could call it that. Jack really didn't
understand the science, but whatever the Yaoguai were, they weren't
classic humans or animals. They weren't comprised of matter, just
electricity – it was, however, something even more than
electricity, something more than the simple motion of electrons.
How much more, Jack couldn't understand. The best explanation he'd
ever received was the Yaoguai were stuck between something – stuck
between the world that Jack inhabited and wherever the hell they
came from. Some science boffin had tried to explain them by
appealing to quantum physics, but Jack hadn't understood a word of
it, and what was more, he wasn't sure the explanation was
necessary. Regardless of where they came from and what exactly they
were, the most pertinent fact about them was that they were an
incredible threat. They existed for one purpose: to consume living
creatures. The Yaoguai lived off the energy of others.