Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 (2 page)

The alternative was black market work, where he’d gotten his start. Jordan would have opinions about the black market, though.

“More like passing through,” Rook said. “Getting the lay, so to speak.”

Chuck took the seat opposite him without invitation. “Things have changed since you left.”

“Seems to me things are exactly the same. What do you want, Chuck?”

Chuck sat back, crossed a leg, and heaved a sigh. For a second, he seemed older and world-weary. “The dreamwaters have gotten more dangerous lately. I’ve lost a few people. Don’t know what happened to them. They just never woke up. I had to put the last one—kid imported from the Ukraine—out of his misery in the waking world myself. And you know how I hate mess.”

Chuck had specialized in messes back in the day. But Rook wasn’t surprised; he had a pretty good idea what was in the dreamwaters, and it wasn’t for the faint of heart. No “imported kids” could survive it. Chuck had never cared about dangers Darkside before. A mere hint of aptitude for lucid dreaming, and he’d throw a person in the deep end. What did he expect? A few were always going to drown. Add monsters to the waters, sharks scenting blood, and their chances were even slimmer.

“How inconvenient for you.” Rook wished he’d hunted down Chuck and had him put in jail as soon as he’d made marshal in Chimera, but he hadn’t wanted to look back. The past had always had its hands on him, grasping, pulling. When Rook had walked off the streets with Steve Coll, he didn’t so much as dare look over his shoulder. He’d been little more than a kid himself then. Not so, anymore.

“My point is,” Chuck said, “I’m looking for talent.”

“Everyone’s looking for talent.” With the popularity of the Rêves, the corporate shared dreams designed for the masses, anyone who was attempting to do business in the waters wanted the few pitiful souls who could navigate them. “A piece of unsolicited advice: transfer your operation to the waking world. It’s only going to get worse Darkside.”

“I have a feeling you know about worse.”

“I do. It will literally eat you alive.”

“
You
seem fine.” Chuck gave him a considering look. “You seem good, in fact.”

Rook put ankle to knee and leveled with him. Jordan would be back soon, and he really didn’t want them to meet. “I’m not taking work right now. I’ve got too much heat on me, and it’s of a nature that would doom whatever I tried to do. My last two jobs both went bad.” Vince Blackman had been lost in the Scrape, and Jordan had been dragged out there by a nightmare creature and almost died. “Which is why I’m in this shithole.” And would be in a different one tomorrow.

“If I recall, you can navigate Darkside as well as if you’d never left the womb.”

Rook shook his head. “I said no.” Not for Chuck, who was so careless with talent. He could not, under any circumstances, learn about Jordan’s ability. Chuck could only know that Jordan was a woman Rook had been sleeping with. No connections. Everything temporary, like the old days.

“Of course, the increased risk would warrant extra compensation.”

Chuck wasn’t listening, so Rook refused to say more. He needed to check with some other contacts, get a feel for the business these days. Find someone who didn’t burn through his people like matches.

Rook was contemplating how to get Chuck to leave when he noticed the subtle flicker of light over the man’s shoulder—a vertical glow. His attention rested there. The more he looked, the more the light took on subtle dimension, human proportions. It reminded him of those ghostly online clips caught by security cameras or amateur videographers, “proof” of life after death.

This was no ghost, however.

Where he’d simply gone cold at Chuck’s arrival, now ice flowed through Rook’s system.

He knew what this was. Steve Coll, his friend and partner, could do it. And so could Didier Lambert, the international “hero” who’d introduced shared dreaming to the world and who sought some kind of dominion over it through violent and reprehensible means.

Rook’s throat went dry. He willed Jordan to stay away:
Danger! Don’t come back! Run!

“You
are
good,” Chuck said.

“Not my first waking dream.” A waking dream was an illusion that fooled the mind into thinking it was real. It was a daydream, easy to slip into, hard to recognize for what it was. Only those nightmare people could create them. And whoever was in the shaft of light brought the number of nightmare people Rook knew about up to three.

Chuck grinned. “So you do know just how strange things have become underwater.”

“Yeah, I do.” Rook kept his gaze on Chuck, pretending to ignore the light, but he concentrated on his peripheral vision to disassemble the shimmer, working his mind past the trick to the see the reveler as he was in the waking world.
She
, he corrected himself. Straight white-blond hair with blunt bangs. Heart-shaped face drawn into a pout. And, yeah, she had the freaky creepy eyes, too. “So is it you or the lady who I should be talking to?”

Chuck’s eyebrows went way up. “Where have you seen others like her?”

He hadn’t answered the question, so the lady was probably in charge.

“I was Chimera,” Rook said. “I’ve bumped into her kind once or twice in the past.” Actually, he’d only seen one in his personal experience, Steve Coll. He’d heard about Lambert from Coll and Maisie. “She’s a walking nightmare.”

“Careful,” Chuck said.

“Why should I be careful? The Scrape is full of monsters like her.”

Rook had to know what kind of person he was dealing with, and he wouldn’t find anything out by ingratiating himself.

“I need you to do a job,” Chuck said.

“Have her do it.”

“Please, Rook, don’t make this messy. I don’t like mess.”

The threat. Rook had known it was coming. If it had just been Chuck—and hell, even some of his better revelers—Rook could’ve drowned him in the waters, collected Jordan, and been well on their way before Chuck made it back to the waking world.

He hadn’t anticipated another freak.
Three
of them. What was the world coming to?

There’d be no Chinese food tonight. No Jordan taking his temperature. Just that old life, reaching out from behind him to drag him back in.

Rook looked beyond the light to the blond lady’s face. He could just make out a small mole on her cheek. She was young, dressed in leather, but with a bare midriff. Red scraggly lines on her skin peeked out of her pants. Stretch marks? “What makes you think I’d do anything for you?”

“You don’t have a choice,” she answered, her words drawn out like a lullaby.

Darkness rushed him as if the waking world was made of dreamwater, too. Instinctively, he attempted to surge upward to gulp for air, but his reach wasn’t long enough, not nearly, and a whirlpool sucked him down and around, whipping him senseless like a rag doll.

***

Dizzy?
Yeah, right.
Jordan knew Malcolm was hiding something from her. She just wasn’t the type to demand answers—or worse, whine—when he clearly wanted privacy. Either she trusted him or she didn’t. So she was going with it.

With a brown paper bag full of hot Chinese food under her arm, Jordan turned the corner down the dark street where she and Malcolm were staying for the time being. No idea how long or even whose place it was. Malcolm had some contacts who were obliged to help him, past favors coming due, future favors promised, that kind of thing. Made her nervous for him, as if he were taking loans out on his soul. They needed to find their own way and soon.

The creepy street grew quiet as she walked away from Tenth Ave, where restaurants of every ethnicity lined the street. She passed redbrick buildings with green awnings, an industrial row with only fire escapes, and a graffiti-tagged garage. The New York street could’ve been found in her sister Maisie’s dream city, a place they called Maze City—pitch-black pools of energy mixing with an ominous pall, a combo that put Jordan on guard.

So when a man stepped out of the shadows and grabbed her arm, she was ready. The Chinese food dropped to the pavement, and leveraging his weight, she kneed him in the balls.

He folded like a chair, gasping. “I’m trying to help you.”

She knew his voice. “Vince?”

Vince Blackman had once tried to hand her over to Didier Lambert’s organization. She’d drowned him for it—though he had no idea that in so doing, she’d sent him into the great dust storm beyond the dreamscapes. He’d met with the nightmare creatures there, but he’d survived.

“You can’t go back,” Vince said. “They took him.”

“What do you mean they took him?” The hunger that had pulled her out the door to pick up dinner now added an edge to her mood. “No one knows where we are.”
Wait…
“How did
you
find us?”

Inside, her heart was breaking. She hadn’t wanted this to end so soon. Why so soon?

“I found
you
, Jordan.” Vince was attempting to drag her back down the street the other way, but she wasn’t having it. “I didn’t even have to look. I was pulled right here. We have a connection.”

Connection. Ridiculous. They’d been found.

Malcolm had taught her how to use darksight, to see revelers among those in the waking world. But when she forced her vision down the street—let the darkness and the dim ambient light blur together—she couldn’t make out a damn thing that would tell her where Malcolm was or who’d taken him. She should’ve been able to see Malcolm from here. Why couldn’t she see him?

Somewhere on the walk back from the restaurant her dream had shattered.

“You can’t go back there,” Vince said. “He’s been taken. They came ten minutes ago, and if you go any farther, they’ll have you, too.”

“Why should I believe you?” She didn’t want to believe him. She wanted to sink back into the heat and pleasure of Malcolm’s arms. She should’ve never left without him. Her first instinct was to hurry back and see for herself with her regular sight. But she couldn’t. If Vince had found her, then the place
had
been compromised. She should turn and run. It was the smart thing to do, but she didn’t want to be smart. She was wailing inside.

“Because I’m sorry I tried to hurt you,” Vince said. “I lost my father because of it.”

She didn’t know whether to knee him again or pity him. His father was dead because of his involvement with Didier Lambert.

Vince was supposed to be in a hospital on the other side of the country. Or that’s where she thought he’d been yesterday. He looked hospital-worthy, gaunt and pale, his once-handsome features sharp.

“Jordan, you have no reason to believe me,” he said, “but I swear to you, Rook was taken. Don’t go back there now. Come with me. I’ll help you.”

But follow
Vince
?
He’d been an agent of Didier Lambert’s. He probably still was, regardless of what had happened to his father. The coincidence of him showing up at the same time as Malcolm being “taken” was just too much.

She backed down the street a couple of steps, taking a deep, steeling breath. No going home. Honeymoon over. The best thing to do was to go Darkside and tell Steve Coll. Then work out a plan with him to find Malcolm. She hadn’t been a fan of Steve and his inhuman aspects, but she was more than willing to ask him for help now. Steve was great. She was all about Steve now.

Turning her back on the place she and Malcolm had shared for the past few days, she picked up her pace to head back toward light and noise. Long strides charged her blood as she thought through what she’d need to do.

A hand at her back told her that Vince was matching her pace. Lose him? Or use him?

Think.
She had to assume he was working for
them
, a thought that made her slow for a second as she turned it over in her mind. In a way, she was just as caught as Malcolm, but the powers that be were just playing her differently. Therefore, she could do nothing that would lead Chimera or Lambert to Steve and Maisie. She had find an
indirect
way to contact Steve. How the hell was she supposed to do that? She didn’t even know where they were in the waking world.

“We’ll go right to Chimera,” Vince said. “They have a huge branch here. I know some people.”

Chimera. Ha.
So that’s whom Vince was working for. Chimera was corrupt.

She came to a decision: Lose him.

Then run.

It’s what Malcolm had drilled into her.
Never stay too long in the same place.
Three days was now officially too long. They’d made a mistake somewhere.

Turning back onto Tenth Ave, she considered how difficult it would be to get away from Vince. She could drown him where he stood, and then she could cut inside the deli and right back out the rear exit. Would cops and Chimera appear and tase her? What if she screamed for help and used the ensuing commotion to make her escape?

Vince kept talking, but she wasn’t fully listening. “When they hear one of their own has been kidnapped…”

Panic tightened her lungs. Made her head buzz.

“Jordan!” She was jerked backward out of the street as a bus rushed by, inches from where she’d been about to step. Vince had his arm around her waist.