Darksider: Reveler Series 3 (5 page)

She frowned while she thought about it. “There’s something dark in you now, darker than I remember, but I wouldn’t call it mean.”

He couldn’t lie to her. “Trust me, I can be mean.”
Just wait and see.

The current in the water responded to his intensity and arousal. If he didn’t break his hold, he was going to break his promise and kiss her hard and deep, the way that made her clutch him back. He knew she would; currents this strong came from both of them wanting.

In what he considered a supreme act of heroism, he released his hold on her. Moved backward. Gave her space.

Changed the subject.

“What is this place?” He made a show of looking around at the big blurred shapes of color in her rubbed-out dream. He concluded that she’d blurred and wrecked it so that the predator wouldn’t know what she dreamed about and use it against her. “I’m guessing bumper cars.”

She squinted at her own dream, too. “
What
?”

“
Flying
bumper cars.”

“You think I dream about flying bumper cars?”

“There’s an amusement park Rêve in which these bumper car things do fly.” It was a wild, bashing kind of arcade game popular with the younger set. The Rêve hosted lots of bar mitzvahs.

“It’s my restaurant.” She seemed to gather energy, became less vulnerable. The word
my
did that for her. “The second one, I mean. I invested my own money—I finally saved enough. I come here and imagine what it’s going to be like when it’s finished. Occasionally I make tiny tweaks that drive the contractors crazy. Can’t help myself.”

The shapes took on definition and texture—deep-blue leather chairs and benches tucked under tables with crisp white linens. A zinc bar extended along the far wall. Dark hardwood floors gleamed, the dreamwaters evaporating like upward-streaming droplets. Huge windows looked out over a bluff to the ocean.

The place was suddenly light, airy, as bright as her smile.

“It’s my happy place.” But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, her expression darkened. She whirled around to look behind her and backed slowly toward Harlen, mumbling, “I
knew
he’d come. Stand back. I’m going to punch his face in, then you can arrest him.”

The intruder moved like a two-dimensional shadow, concealing himself. If the person stealing into her dream was the predator that had been stalking her, then he would’ve noticed Harlen and fled.

It was probably Rook, tracking him down for the meeting tonight. He knew better than to sneak into a stranger’s dreams uninvited, so he deserved what he got.

Harlen’s girl had her fists balled and knew how to use them.

“Um, Sera—?” Harlen began halfheartedly.

***

Sera had thought she’d been stressed into recurring nightmares of pursuit and terror, but they
hadn’t
been a figment of her imagination. Her stalker had been real the whole time.

Lunging forward, she swung with all her might and felt a connection of electricity, as if her arm were a lightning bolt striking.

The shadow was propelled backward. He was a big guy, bigger than she remembered. He smashed one of her dining tables, its legs buckling with the force of his fall. The impact shook the floor of her restaurant and rattled the bottles behind the bar.

He didn’t get up, just laid there looking at her $3000 light fixtures. They
were
gorgeous.

“Well done,” Harlen said, smiling.

“Arrest him!”

“He is, in fact, wanted by Chimera for a long list of crimes.”

She could see the intruder clearly now: a strange man, stubbly, dark haired. Late twenties?

“It’s not him,” she said. The guy looking through the restaurant window had been older, face more chiseled, paler.

“This one’s bad though,” Harlen said. “Hit him again.”

She huffed, exasperated. “Who is he? Why is he here?” Why did strange criminal men keep finding her dreams?

“You sure you don’t want kick him at least?”

Sera narrowed her eyes at Harlan.

“Fine. His name is Malcolm Rook. He’s our tracker.” Harlen took a step toward the fallen man. “She’s pretty awesome, isn’t she?”

The man—
Malcolm, was it?
—grunted. “It’s Coll’s turn next time.”

Another
big guy stepped out from the kitchen area, hands raised in surrender. “I come in peace.”

Not if he’d been in her kitchen he hadn’t.

She looked at Harlen again. “Explain now, please.”

“They’re friends of mine,” Harlen said. “At least I think they are. Jury’s still out. But Rook, on the floor there,
is
the best tracker I know, and he’s going to find your stalker.”

Malcolm managed to push himself up onto his elbows. “I’m going to track someone?”

Harlen gave him a crocodile smile. “If you want my help you are.”

Malcolm made a face. “Why do you think I want your help? Maybe I called you this morning to catch a game or play poker.”

“You’re gambling all right. I could just as easily turn you in.”

Malcolm sat up all the way. Sighed. “Good point. And what am I supposed to do when I find the guy I’m tracking?”

“Give him to me.”

Chills ran down Sera’s spine at Harlan’s tone. “What’s going on here? How did these guys even know where to find you?” she asked.

Harlen was about to answer when Malcolm made what he must have thought was a subtle shut-it signal.

“Fawkes,” said the guy who came from the kitchen, “it’d be best if you left the lady out of this business. We’re in the midst of…an investigation, and it’s as dangerous as anything Darkside gets.”

The ominous “anything” must’ve been pretty bad, because Sera knew some scary stuff went on in the dreamwaters. She’d witnessed it herself.

“I won’t leave her alone,” Harlen said. “Not Darkside, not in the waking world. She has a stalker who can navigate in the waters. I need Rook to find and identify him. There won’t be any paperwork.”

Again, that chilling tone.

Sera knew she’d said she wanted to kill whoever had been tormenting her, but there was at least a little metaphor going on there—like, she wanted to ruin his life by sending him to jail, not have Harlen end it with his bare hands.

“This is urgent,” Kitchen Man said.

“Not more urgent than Sera’s stalker.”

“
Lives
are at stake.”

“I only care about one.”

Sera held up her hands. “Harlen, I’ll be okay for a few days.” She’d stay away from windows, for sure. “Now that I know he’s not a bad recurring nightmare, I can fight him better.
Meaner
.” She cocked her head at Malcolm, who was now standing, though a little wobbly. “I was just getting warmed up when I smacked him.”

“I don’t doubt you, sweetheart,” Harlen said. “But I can’t walk away. It’s physically impossible.” He shrugged. “Maybe when the stalker is dead, but I wouldn’t count on it then, either.”

He can’t walk away? The revelation seeped into her, its warmth flowing over old wounds. This was what she’d feared when she’d called him—the connection that ran deep and true. He’d said he was attracted, and she’d felt the petulant whine of her own nerve endings when she’d denied herself touching him. Even now she was tight inside, wanting. After all this time, there was only Harlen.

The other two men whispered together back and forth like teenage girls, for which she was grateful. Without their presence, she might’ve walked into Harlen’s arms. And then what?

Finally, the girls made up their minds and turned back. Kitchen Man spoke. “Rook will track whatever trail he can find and report back. I will suffer Maisie’s possible wrath and take you
both
to the city.”

Maisie?
“What city?” Sera asked. Were they going out of town? She only had a few days to be away from the restaurant.

“A cool city. A safe one.” Kitchen Man held out his hand. “By the way, I’m Steve Coll. I’ve worked with Harlen for a few years now. A Rêve is always safe when he’s on duty.”

She shook it and didn’t doubt his assessment. “Thanks for letting me borrow him.”

“Oh, I get the feeling we’re borrowing him from you,” Malcolm said, massaging his jaw. “How about you tell me who I’m searching for?”

Three big guys, arms folded, looked at her intently. Suddenly she could see Harlen as a Chimera agent. Experience showed in the directness of his gaze and in the no-nonsense stance of his trained body. Those muscles weren’t just for show. Back in the day he had enjoyed flexing for her—and everyone else. Now, he actually used them.

She took a deep breath. “Apparently, someone has been sneaking into my dreams.”

“How frequent?” Malcolm asked.

She glanced at Harlen. Winced. “On and off for almost a year, but almost every night recently. But I thought I was just having nightmares. It started around the time I decided to go for it and invest in a second location.”

“Location for what?”

“I’m a chef. A restaurant.” She sighed again. “Anyway, this morning, in the waking world, I saw the guy outside my current location.”

“She was so exhausted,” Harlen said, “she went through a window to try to grab him.”

Steve’s forehead tensed. “So you have trouble discerning the waking world from Darkside?”

“
No
,” she said, defensively. “I just wasn’t thinking. It lasted one second.”

Harlen closed his eyes, and the muscles at his jaw flexed.

“Well, if he’s been here a lot recently, chances are he’ll be easy for me to trace,” Malcolm put in. “And if she saw him in the waking world, then we know he wasn’t one of those…you know.”

“One of those what?” she demanded.

“Classified,” Harlen quipped to her, but to them, he clarified, “No, he’s human.”

After that, she shut up to contemplate the implications of there being something
non-human
to worry about. Because…damn. Since they all worked Darkside, it meant that there was something non-human specifically in the dreamwaters, a threat that could presumably cross into individual dreamscapes.
Huh.
She gleaned from their continuing conversation that one such creature had followed Malcolm before, but he seemed confident he could do “a little ordinary tracking” without risking himself. They were to tell someone named Jordan that he would be fine.

Sera was experiencing a little arrhythmia herself. No biggie.
Smile
, she told herself. She was an excellent conspiracy theorist where Rêve was concerned—what with all the chatter online about Rêve abuses, black market memories, and people developing woo-woo creepy powers, who wasn’t?—but she hadn’t seen this one coming. Non-humans. Yeah, okay, that beat her stalker, priority-wise.

Malcolm moved a little bit away from them. An expression of deep concentration was struck across his face. His eyes were partly closed, head cocked as if to listen. His arms were bent at the elbows, hands somewhat flexed, reaching. With a slight lift of his chin he tasted the air, inhaling.

She could feel the dreamwaters ripple from where he stood. His tracking technique was obviously multi-sensory, and she could relate—she used all five senses in her craft, too.

A slow smile grew on Malcolm’s face as he looked over at her. “Got him.”

The man was kinda hot, actually. A rough shimmer of light, and he was gone.

Someone cleared his voice in her ear.

She turned.

“We’ve got to go now.” Harlen sounded irritated.

Well, she was freaking out, so she won.

Steve frowned and addressed them both. “First I need your assurance that you will not, under any circumstances, bring anyone to Maze City after I show you how to get there. And if someone happens to follow you, do not reveal to them how to navigate the labyrinth.”

Harlen nodded. “Agreed.”

Sera gave a friendly shrug. “Hey, no worries here. You guys lost me at
classified
.” She couldn’t bring herself to say
non-human.
She wasn’t remotely ready to utter that.

She really needed to chop some vegetables. Fennel would be good. Like a lot of it.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Scrape wind blew, its cutting grains burning Harlen’s eyes and throat, sensations that suddenly and harshly reminded him of times he wanted to forget: running for his life, while weighed down with awful, heavy visions critical to a mission’s success.

It’d been too long since he’d ventured outside of the Agora, where all of the dreams were artificial constructions. No matter how dark and twisted those constructions were—and some catered to the most depraved tastes—they were fundamentally false experiences. The Scrape, however, was a naturally occurring, elemental, endless dust storm. It was a primal force, an emotion of its own, hollow and howling.

The spaces between dreamscapes messed with his memory, so he kept a tight grip on Sera’s hand and—
heh
—let her think he was protecting her, when she was really
his
anchor.