Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 (12 page)

“Unit ten, clear the stairwells. Fifteen, hold position,” the guy bellowed into the walkie. His soldiers assembled down the corridor in a straight line. “Repeat. Unit ten, stairwells. Fifteen, hold. Do not travel. Over.”

“Call the guy sitting on his ass in front of the security feed,” Zeke suggested loudly. “Ask him where the wraiths are. They ain’t movie vamps. They show up on camera just fine.”

“With all due respect, sentry,” the sergeant began, but Zeke held up a hand.

“Anytime you start a sentence with due respect, you’re about to be disrespectful. And you sound like a chump.” He stepped closer to read the guy’s nametag. Nametags and uniforms—he didn’t miss that shit. “Spit it out, Roberts.”

Roberts, as it happened, wasn’t completely bald. His hair was shaved so close to his brown scalp it matched it. Most of the drones Zeke had seen tonight had been male, clean cut and rigid.

Not that long hair was a great idea. Wraiths could grab it and sling you around. But Zeke preferred hair to keep him warm. Military crew wasn’t his style. He’d spent his first two alucinator years in the Somnium military before getting himself reassigned to an area base where he could do some good.

Roberts studied Zeke as if assessing whether or not to take him seriously…or what the consequences would be for pistol whipping an out-of-town sentry. As if Zeke would let that happen.

Roberts broke the silence first. “This isn’t an area castrum. We have specific protocol here.”

Protocol apparently meant turning into statues while wraiths were doing God only knew what behind your back.

“The fact you’re calling it a castrum instead of a base lets me know you got your head up your ass.” Nobody used the formal term out in the field. Base was base. Fucking castrum. Just like HQ was not a fucking praetorium. It was HQ. “Do you want to dust these wraiths or not? Start by killing the sirens. We need ears.”

Roberts looked like he’d rather punch Zeke than behead a vamp. “The wraiths will be eliminated in due course.”

“How about sooner? Like before they hop to trauma one? There’s actually breathing people on that floor.”

“We’re well aware the originator of the infestation is in trauma one. The wraiths are migrating in that direction and will eventually put in an appearance. We have strategic roadblocks at the elevators, stairs and access tubes.”

Zeke couldn’t deny the wraiths might be making a beeline for Maggie. Didn’t mean she’d manifested them. She’d been attracting wraiths since day one. “Or you could find and kill them now.”

The guy didn’t budge. “Or we could refuse admittance to undisciplined, ill-trained phase one disciples who jeopardize our operation.”

“Talk to Adi about that. You know, your boss? The one who summoned that disciple and me to your operation?” Had everyone in the entire Somnium been briefed about his lack of progress with Maggie? He’d hoped it only extended throughout his own area. “Now me? You talk to me about killing wraiths. You boys may have seen some action lately, but I hunt several times a week. If you want to accomplish anything here, you need audio.”

Roberts, for whatever reason, finally shit the stick out of his ass. He clicked his walkie. “This is unit fifteen command. Cancel sirens on level five. Over.”

After ten seconds, the sirens and purple lights both shut off. Zeke’s ears rang in their absence. Would take a minute for him to adjust, and the soldiers too. He hoped that drone near the intersection didn’t get jumped from behind because he couldn’t hear the monsters rush him.

Roberts turned to him with a more relaxed expression. “We aren’t strangers to combat, Garrett. We all trained the same way.”

“Yeah, but I’m not stationed at a research facility where I stand around like a post all day, hoping some coma patient goes bust so I can land some action.” Karen’s wraiths could kill guards—or manifest higher up. “The situation calls for offense, not defense.”

“Patients and trauma victims have less control over conduits. We do experience manifestations. The structure of this facility requires a different strategic approach than field assignments with a civilian populace,” Roberts said evenly. “We are prepared here. The wraiths cannot operate touchpads, and there’s nothing they can hurt inside these rooms. Once we determine they aren’t free-ranging, we will take the next step. It is protocol. And it works. Even if it is, as you say, defense.”

Zeke sniffed. “Trust your nose. Don’t you smell that shit? They’re nearby.”

“If they were near us, they would attack.”

Not if they were Karen’s wraiths and she’d infested them with some other purpose—like staying alive long enough to reach Maggie. “Talk to the guy watching the cameras. Ask him where they are.”

“They’re on this level. That’s been confirmed by our scanner, who geolocated the code one.” Roberts pointed at the intersection ceiling, where the black globe of a camera was installed. “Look, Garrett, funds are limited in all branches of the Somnium. The cold box doesn’t have cameras everywhere, just corridors and the autopsy chamber. Eyewitness confirmation in morgue rooms is required.”

Easy answer. “What are we waiting for? Let’s sweep the damn rooms.”

“The stairwells are currently being cleared.”

“You’ve got a whole unit on standby.”

The commander stared at his men and finally conceded. “Unit ten, after the stairs, clear all rooms in your sector. Unit fifteen will handle the rest. Over.”

The eleven soldiers split into three groups to cover the rooms. Zeke accompanied the group that had Roberts in it. He wanted an idea of how the guy handled himself in combat.

As they trotted down a corridor, Roberts remained in contact with the other troops. After confirming another clean sweep, he came to a halt in front of a door.

The acrid stench of wraith thickened. None of the soldiers commented or made much noise as Roberts inspected the window into the room, but it appeared to be completely dark. He activated the keypad.

These doors weren’t as reinforced as the ones in maximum security, and it didn’t matter. As soon as the door swung open, they were attacked.

From behind.

Chapter Eight

One of the four soldiers went down in the first wave. Zeke stabbed a vamp attempting to chomp through Roberts’s gorget.

That got the ugly bastard’s attention. It spun to confront Zeke while the sergeant defended the soldier who’d hit the floor.

Zeke wasted no time slicing off the vamp’s head. This sword was really fucking sharp. He liked it. A lot. Proved it by taking out two more vamps in quick succession. The dust grew concentrated enough in the corridor that he was breathing it in. Slipping around in it.

No, that was blood. Shit, another man down. Arm half ripped off. Goddamn. At least it wasn’t the throat. A man could live without an arm. Zeke rammed into the vampire that was trying to get its disgusting fill of the screaming soldier’s blood.

He swung with all his might. The vamp’s head popped off like a cork out of a bottle. For a moment the body and head existed, separate, before collapsing into sand.

“Get yourself against the wall,” he barked at the soldier going into shock. “Tourniquet your upper arm. Move!”

He didn’t have time to give hands-on help—only head’s off help. Vampires came at the small group from every direction. The remaining soldier and Roberts were doing a sight better than their comrades. Zeke flung a dagger into a vampire’s hissing mouth. While it struggled to un-gag itself, he whacked off its head.

A heavy body slammed into him from behind. Shit, he shouldn’t have strayed from the wall. Claws scratched his upper arms. Fangs clanked against his gorget. Hot damn. He liked this gorget too. He crouched, fast, unbalancing the monster. With a twist, he flung it over his head. Its claws stung the flesh of his arms as it flew.

Ignoring the pain, he whipped a stake out of his bandolier and pierced its heart.

Sand in his face, in his hair. His eyes watered, clearing themselves, but blurring his vision. A vamp, trying to evade Roberts, tripped over him.

He killed that one too. Roberts didn’t have time to thank him, just moved on to the next monster.

Zeke swung and cursed. Holy hell. Where was the horde coming from? These corridors had been cleared, and the black maw of the doorway to the large morgue room loomed empty.

Mostly empty. As Zeke avoided another roundhouse swipe of claws, several vamps darted into the morgue like crooked shadows. Looking for what? Wraiths had no interest in the dead.

Machine gun fire erupted from the other end of the corridor. Bullets zinged past, blasting into a vampire beside him. One of the splinters from unit fifteen raced into the fray. Zeke counted. New group was short one. Now the defenders had six men upright, counting him, and two down.

The others should come soon, unless they were dead. Zeke defended himself from a double attack. The vampires tried to crowd him into the lightless morgue, but he wasn’t having it. They could see in the dark. He couldn’t.

He kicked one into the wall. It spun into the morgue’s entryway, so he tried to crush it with the door. It squalled when the heavy metal smashed its head in the jamb.

A siren began shrilling—a high, annoying beep instead of the code one manifestation alarm. It was more like a fridge, warning you it had been left open and the beer was getting warm, than a siren warning everyone they were about to be eaten.

Roberts shouted at him. Zeke wasn’t sure what—something about the morgue, or drawers, or whores. Maybe not whores. He killed the vamp hissing at him and tried to figure Roberts out. The dude wanted him to go into the cold storage.

Zeke headed into the blackness, ears tuned for hissing and scrambling. Why wasn’t there a pen light in the damn kit he’d been given? Before he located a switch, Zeke noticed a faint red burst of sparkles deep in the room. He wouldn’t have noticed if it hadn’t happened in near darkness.

When the sparkles disappeared, he caught a brief vision of a brand new vampire before it faded into the blackness of the morgue.

Fucking A. Red sparks. This was a live manifestation. During another live manifestation. Zeke had only seen this sort of thing once.

Harrisburg.

He slapped at the wall beside the door repeatedly until he encountered a switch. Lights thunked on.

Holy shit. The room was full of wraiths, and they had several drawers open.

They were dragging out dead bodies. Ripping off black bags. Eating flesh. Something. How could they…?

In all Zeke’s years as an alucinator, he’d never come this close to barfing in the middle of a battle. He knew wraiths drank blood, ate flesh. But not this. Not zombies or monster crocs or velociraptors or any of them. Their hunger had never, to his knowledge, included dead bodies.

The creatures were so preoccupied with the deceased, ripping them apart like they were searching for morsels, that not a one of them came after the only living, sentient being in the room. Him.

Was he hallucinating? Too much sand? Zeke rubbed his eyes. His fists were coated in sand, so it made the stinging worse. His vision swam. Ten or twelve wraiths converged on the body of a man they’d dragged out of a black bag. They dove into it like jackals. Within moments, it seemed as if the body were gone. Eaten. There was no more body. The wraiths, unsatisfied, began wrenching open drawers.

Zeke backed out of the room and slammed the thick, hopefully secure door. The touchpad beeped three times, and the indicator switched to green, but the thin, faint alarm of the unlocked morgue drawers continued.

This hadn’t happened in Harrisburg. The bodies left behind by the wraiths had been all too recognizable.

Roberts and what remained of unit fifteen had dispatched the wraiths outside the morgue. Two tended their fallen comrades while one radioed for help. Roberts approached Zeke with anger on his face. “Why did you close that door? This is the only room we haven’t cleared.”

“Get reinforcements and code one Adi.” Bile coated Zeke’s tongue, along with the scent of wraiths and their dust. God, what he really wanted was a curator to come handle this so he could take Maggie and go home.

“You don’t think we can handle a couple wraiths?”

Zeke just waved him to the door. Roberts peered through the small window. Since Zeke had hit the lights, the guy could see the carnage for himself.

After a moment, he turned from the window, so green Zeke could see the tinge in his mahogany skin.

“That shit ain’t right,” Zeke said.

Roberts promptly requested backup and Adi.

Zeke promptly headed for trauma and Maggie.

If these idiots thought Maggie was the one responsible for the corpse-eating wraiths and had treated her like a felon, he was going to beat some human ass tonight too.

The bandaged wound on Maggie’s finger throbbed in time to the wail of the siren. The soldiers and doctors had confined her to a holding cell for the time being. A man in the next room was tranced into the dreamsphere to ensure she didn’t pop in and open any new conduits. Another searched desperately for the malingers they believed she’d created, accidentally or otherwise.

They had reason to be concerned. When Maggie had clawed her way out of the sphere, she’d brought a passel of vampires with her. Five living.

Two dead.

Nobody would answer how that was possible—how wraith remains hadn’t collapsed into dust. Nobody would tell her whether Zeke and Adi were all right. Nothing she said about Karen Kingsbury’s presence in the dreamsphere seemed to make a difference. Everyone knew Maggie had gone into the sphere, and everyone knew she manifested. She’d been in the cell since they’d stitched her up, guarded like a criminal.

If the manifestations didn’t stop, the next logical step would be to use the ECT on her.

She just wished they’d stationed a guard inside the holding cell. A wraith could manifest inside and attack her before anyone could get through the door. She didn’t have a dagger, sword or anything to defend herself with. Wraiths weren’t terribly impressed with her keen debating skills.

Bleakly, she eyed the metal table in the center of the room and the folding chair she thankfully wasn’t chained to. She could use the chair as a shield or a swatter, she supposed. The table—she pushed it experimentally—was bolted to the concrete floor. She had no hairpins, jewelry or other innocuous items to convert into screwdrivers and take the table apart.

A year ago it would never have occurred to her to search an area for weapons.

A year ago her parents had been alive and her abilities as an alucinator had lain dormant.

Maggie rested her head on the cold metal and hunched her shoulders around her ears, tired of the siren’s wail, the purple lights, the waiting. Tired in general. Her psyche and self were drained after her experience in the dreamsphere, the wraith attack, and her twenty-four-plus hour day.

Would Adi and Zeke allow her to be ECT’d? Did they believe she was weak? So sleepy. Her body felt as heavy and immovable as a…big metal table bolted to the floor.

The next thing she knew, she was being konked on the back of the head.

“Wake up, disciple.” Her guard had entered the room and jabbed her with the barrel of his gun. When she reacted slower than he liked, he poked her again.

Maggie flinched and raised a hand to rub the bruise. Her ears buzzed a little, and the man’s voice seemed muffled. “I’m up, I’m up.”

“What the fuck?” said another voice she recognized.

Two seconds later, the guard was mashed against the wall, Zeke’s arm at his throat, cutting off his air. The gun clattered to the floor and happily didn’t fire. Zeke was shorter than the soldier—Zeke was shorter than a lot of the soldiers—but his ferocity and street-smarts made up for his stature in combat situations.

He appeared to be unharmed. Maggie hoped the relief trickling through her at the sight of him acted as a stimulant, because she wasn’t sure how much longer she could remain awake.

“What are you trying to do to my student, shoot her execution style?” Zeke growled. Maggie had no trouble hearing him. The sirens were off. No purple lights outside, either. When had that happened? “Is that what they’re teaching up at HQ these days?”

The soldier choked out a response and pulled Zeke’s arm. The young man’s mesh gorget didn’t protect him from being immobilized, even if Zeke couldn’t slash the guy’s jugular. When Zeke trapped her in that position during training, she bent his pinkies and kneed him in the balls. Or tried to. Maybe the soldier knew not to bother…or not to piss off a sentry any more than he already had.

“I asked you a question, soldier.”

“He was waking me up,” Maggie said. Did Zeke really expect the kid to answer when he could barely breathe? The soldier looked about the age of her Geography 301 students. “I dozed off.”

Zeke transferred his glare to her. “What the hell are you doing letting yourself fall asleep without me? You’re not phase two yet, and you can’t barricade yourself.”

She yawned, not on purpose. It answered his question. “Sorry.”

“Sir,” the soldier managed. “Following orders. Keep her awake.”

Zeke let the guy go with a puff of disgusted air. Her guard rubbed his neck and sheepishly retrieved the dropped weapon.

“Get out,” Zeke said. “And sign up for more hand to hand. You suck.”

Zeke’s throat was protected by a gorget, too, and his protective vest was coated in wraith dust. Weapons hung all over him. Apparently, Adi had decided he could be armed during the code one, and the wraith dust explained what he’d been doing since she’d last seen him.

Killing monsters.

“He probably didn’t want to get in trouble for fighting a superior.” Maggie arched her spine against the chair in hopes of popping it. Slumping on the table for a little shut-eye had done a number on her back. “Leave him alone.”

The guard shot her a startled glance, as if surprised she had empathy for anyone. If they assumed she was creating the monsters, they might also assume she was psycho like Karen Kingsbury—cold and murderous.

Zeke had held that cold and murderous woman tenderly in his arms in the dreamsphere while she’d warned him Maggie was going to be used by the wraiths.

Karen had been right. The creatures had poured through Maggie’s unshielded dream body, just like two months ago. She didn’t know how many of the wraiths attacking the facility were her fault.

A few of them? All of them?

The soldier slid out the door and shut it behind him. It sealed with a clunk and beep. Now she, Zeke and Zeke’s weapons were locked in together, which was preferable to being locked in alone and weaponless.

“What’s going on?” Maggie asked. The cell had a security camera in the corner. Considering Adi’s desire for confidentiality, she didn’t know what they could discuss. “Is Adi hurt?” Another yawn interrupted her. “Is that why everyone’s so upset?”

“Everyone’s upset because we’ve got a code one.” Zeke made no move to approach her, though his gaze burned as he inspected her. Something about his expression—maybe it was the way he stared at her mouth—reminded her of what had happened between them in the SUV. “We’ve lost some people.”

“Oh, God. I’m so…” She’d been about to apologize, as if it were her doing. Maggie rubbed her cheek to stop herself, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. If anything, the catnap had made her exhaustion worse. “How many wraiths? I saw several when I first came out.”

“I don’t know the exact count.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the observation window. “Stand up.”

“What?”

“On your feet.” He jerked his chin at her. “Twenty jumping jacks.”

She groaned. “I don’t want to.”

“I could insist on push-ups.”

She opted for jacks. It would invigorate her, get her blood going. She started jumping, swinging her arms, falling into the pattern. Stupid shoes for this, loafers. Stupid dress pants, stupid, stupid bra. Her chest bounced uncomfortably. She reduced the height of her jumps rather than grope herself on camera with the ever-useful “hand bra”.

Zeke watched, eyes hooded. She realized he was focused on the area that concerned her as well.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” she said, proud she wasn’t panting.

He raised an eyebrow. “Looks painful.”

She reached twenty, shook out her arms, walked across the room, and punched him in the cheek. It was a weak, poorly-angled uppercut, but his head snapped into the wall with a thunk.