Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (29 page)

She ran back into the
carousel room, her boots squeaking frantically against the clean,
polished floor.

As she ran, she saw the dark
shape of a gun next to the carousel. She ducked down, grabbed it
up, and held it in her arms, ensuring the muzzle was pointed well
away from her. Then she dropped to her knees, climbed onto the
conveyor belt, and crawled as fast as she could through the
carousel door.

As soon as she was through,
she snapped to her feet and brought the gun around.

She'd never used a real gun,
of course she hadn't; what kind of a programmer used an assault
rifle?

She brought it up, pointed
it right at the glowing blue pile of luggage, and then she squeezed
her finger onto the trigger.

She stumbled backwards as
the gun began to fire; the force of it was incredible as it bucked
in her arms.

She instantly released her
finger from the trigger, surprise shaking through her as she
realized that the gun had yanked to the left and right, spraying
bullets along the sides of the room, but missing the luggage
entirely.

She gritted her teeth and
tried again, this time pressing the butt of the gun hard into the
crook of her arm, and taking several steps forward, coming as close
to the luggage as she could.

As she neared, her aim
improved, and the bullets snaked right into the luggage. One after
the other.

The force of the gun was
incredible, and the noise of it was thunderous.

She kept her finger on the
trigger until the gun clicked.

She was out of
ammo.

That didn't matter. As the
last bullet released from the chamber, the only remaining line of
blue light snapped.

With the blue lines gone,
the light in the room dwindled and died.

Celeste still had her finger
pressed on the trigger, even though the gun was out of ammo. It
took about 20 seconds to finally release it and let the gun drop to
the ground next to her.

It was dark, completely
dark.

That was a good
thing.

Jack West

It was when one had been on
top of him, just about ripping through the fabric of his sleeves,
that it had stopped.

In fact all of them had
stopped. In a massive crack, all of the Yaoguai had disappeared,
snapping back to whatever relic they'd come from.

It was so sudden. Just as
Jack had prepared for death, he'd been given a reprieve.

For a second, he could still
see the expression of the Yaoguai that had almost killed him seared
into his mind, but with the creature gone, he scrabbled to his
feet, backing off, shifting his head to stare around
him.

They were all gone, every
single Yaoguai that had been assaulting his team and the other team
he'd found at the bus terminal was gone. In fact, a quick flick of
his eyes to the multi-storey car park above him, told him that the
distinct blue light of the Yaoguai had withdrawn from there too.
They seemed to be gone from the airport tarmac, even from the
airport itself. In fact, as Jack surveyed all around him, he
couldn't see any blue light whatsoever.

He turned towards the
baggage terminal. This could mean only one thing. He pulled out his
torch, and began to walk towards it, ignoring the pain in his leg,
even ignoring the blood that was trickling down to his ankle. He
hobbled over the road, his body jarring from his heavy, awkward
steps.

By the time he made it
through the completely broken doors leading to the arrival lounge,
he could see Celeste making her way through the carousel door,
pulling back the heavy plastic flaps, and dragging something along
behind her.

He half ran towards
her.

She was alive. She looked
fine in fact. She could still move, obviously, and she was still
breathing, and it didn't look as if she was carrying any horrible
wound. In another moment, she stood up on the carousel, and then
jumped down easily.

‘
Jack? Is that you?’ Her voice
was careful, and still a harsh whisper.

Celeste,’ he acknowledge
quickly, now rushing up to her.

He kept his torch pointed
away from her face, fighting the urge to cast her features into
full illumination to double check that she was okay.

He looked down to see she
was tugging a suitcase behind her.

She obviously saw his move,
and she pulled at the handle, something rattling around
inside.

‘
I thought I'd bring them to
you.’ She pulled the suitcase off the baggage carousel, and dumped
it onto the ground.

Jack didn't need to ask what
was in it.

‘
I saw all those blue lines that
you talked about, and they were all coming from this cracked open
metal suitcase. I shot them,’ her voice was incredulous, as if she
couldn't exactly believe what she'd done. ‘I figured I'd better
bring them out, so you can contain them now.’

Jack couldn't help but press
his lips open and give a surprised laugh.

She'd done his job for him.
In fact, she'd done the job of the entire Knight unit that had been
sent here.

Jack's surprise didn't stop
him from doing his job though.

He quickly mobilized people
to deal with the relics before the Yaoguais had a chance to
regenerate and reappear.

Celeste walked over to one
of the empty carousels and sat down whilst he was organizing
things.

Very soon, the lights came
back on. He could now see the full extent of the damage. The doors
that lead out to the road were completely broken, the actual frames
almost ripped from the wall. There was shattered metal and broken
glass scattered through the arrival lounge, even up onto the
carousel and escalators.

It didn't take long to deal
with the relics, and this time they split them up, so that if any
Yaoguai appeared, they wouldn't all appear together in a group,
capable of defending themselves in an instant.

Blood still trickled down
Jack's leg, but now the relics had been dealt with, he motioned
over a medic. When his knee and ankle were strapped, he finally
walked over to Celeste.

She was still sitting there
on the carousel.

He'd already ducked his head
into the main luggage room, and had taken in the damage. He'd
flashed his torch around, and had seen the empty assault rifle on
the ground and the bullets in the walls.

She may not have had perfect
aim, but she'd done it.

As Jack neared Celeste, she
looked up. She was breathing steadily, her hands clasped neatly in
front of her.

She wasn't crying, she
wasn't screaming, she wasn't having a panic attack. Occasionally
she closed her eyes, composed herself, and then opened them again,
but that was all she did.

Celeste,
he
couldn't help thinking to himself,
you are amazing.

Celeste Cross

Well, it was meant to be
over now, wasn't it? All the Yaoguai had been dealt with, and it
seemed as if Squire had done whatever they had to do with the
relics to ensure the Yaoguai wouldn't pop their heads out any time
soon. As Celeste looked around the destruction in the arrivals
lounge and on the road outside, she realized that it would take a
lot of cleaning to get this airport up to scratch again.

For some reason that really
affected her. More than the damage a Yaoguai could do to a human
being, it was the damage to the room that brought it home to
her.

The first thing she'd asked
the medic that had come over to see to her was if anyone else had
been hurt. A couple of broken bones, a couple of lacerations,
scratches, and one soldier had almost been absorbed by a Yaoguai,
but there were no deaths. Everyone would recover with time.
Apparently Celeste had arrived just at the right moment. If she
hadn't taken down those relics when she had, the situation would
have turned out differently, and they would be facing multiple
losses.

It was pretty weird to realize
that she had just done something that had saved so many people, and
that, in a way, she'd been responsible for their safety. If she'd
hesitated, tripped over at the wrong moment, or she hadn't
immediately developed the ability to use that rifle, then people
would have died. It left a kind of thumping, heavy feeling in her
gut just thinking about it. She'd been responsible for all of these
people . . . .

Slowly she looked up to see
that Jack had finished with the medic who'd been strapping his leg.
He was now hobbling towards her.

He came to a stop by her
side, looking down, a curious expression on his face. It sent
tantalizing tingles through Celeste's stomach. She straightened up
a bit, pushed her hair out of her face, and got the urge to brush
the muck off her arms and pants.

He turned around and sat
heavily next to her on the carousel. He was close to her, so close
his legs almost brushed up against hers.

‘
Thank you,’ his words were slow,
breathy, and he gave a sharp chuckle. ‘We would have died without
you.’ He faced her in full now, his eyes flickering.

Celeste swallowed and nodded.
‘You would have been fine,’ she said hopefully.

He shook his head pointedly.
‘There was one on me, you know. Before you broke all those energy
lines, there was one my chest. I was seconds away from being
paralyzed, and about half a minute away from being
dead.’

That realization sent a
horrible shudder through her, and she found her shoulders kicking
to the sides in a quick tremor.

Jack watched the move. ‘You all
right?’

‘
I’m
fine . . . . It's just . . . I
didn't realize how close things came
to . . . .’

Silently he gave her the
barest of nods.

‘
Celeste, we were lucky to have
you,’ he admitted quietly, flicking his gaze back to her. ‘You can
come to Gresham City,’ his voice croaked for just a second, ‘if you
want to join our team,’ his voice croaked even more, ‘then you are
welcome,’ he finally seemed to get a handle on his voice and his
words were strong and firm.

She felt uncomfortable and
turned away. ‘Are you sure?’ She turned back to him
carefully.

Slowly he cracked into a smile,
the muscles in his cheeks becoming pronounced as his lips pulled
up. ‘Absolutely.’

Again, Celeste couldn't help
but feel all sorts of tingles racing through her stomach and across
her cheeks.

There was something about
Jack West, the kind of something that pushed from her mind the
memory of her recent battle, and saw her locking her attention on
nobody but him.

‘
What happens now?’ she asked
quietly, wanting to laugh to dispel the tingling feeling in her
stomach, but figuring it wasn't entirely appropriate.

He shrugged after a moment, the
fabric of his thick black uniform scratching around his shoulders.
‘Some unlucky sod gets to clean up this airport, the relics return
to Knight where they will hopefully be dealt with properly, and
then you'll get the commendation you deserve.’

She flushed at the word
commendation. ‘I didn't do anything special, Jack,’ she pointed out
quickly. ‘In fact, I wasn't nearly as quick as I should have been.
I hesitated, I ran outside to see what was going on, and that
probably cost people a lot of injuries.’

His brow compressed, the skin
corrugated, and he gave a sharp shake of his head. ‘There's always
things you could have done better; it's the benefit of hindsight.
But don't throw away your victory. If you hadn't acted, we wouldn't
be alive now. And this is your first combat situation, Celeste, you
have to remember that. You did great.’

A mix of emotions rushed
through Celeste at that. One was a rather fantastic giddy feeling
of being complemented by Jack, but another was what he'd said – it
was her first combat situation. Because there'd be others, right?
She hadn't processed that fact yet, had she? She was about to join
Squire, and there was only one thing they did: fight the Yaoguai.
Very soon, Celeste's life would change completely.

Maybe Jack saw the sudden
confusion playing across her features, because he leaned in and
locked his gaze on hers. ‘We can do this carefully, slowly, give
you time to adjust. Celeste, if you don't want to do this, you can
back out.’

She knew that wasn't an
option. After Knight saw what she'd done here tonight, they
wouldn't let her go. She'd proved herself to be an asset, and
Knight was fighting the kind of war where they couldn't ignore any
advantage. Now that Celeste had proved to herself that she could
help, didn't that make it negligent to turn away? If she ever heard
of another Yaoguai attack that she could have prevented, wouldn't
that elicit a deep sense of guilt in her?

She had never felt
responsibility like this. It weighed on her shoulders like
bricks.

Jack's flickering gaze
crossed over her face. He then leaned in and brought up a large
hand, placing it on her back.