Welcome to the Dream (A Celeste Cross Book, #1) (17 page)

Slowly Jack turned all the
way back to her.

She didn't ask him anything,
she didn't beg him to tell her what was going on. She just watched
him.

‘
Make sure the relic is
contained.’ He brought a hand up and ran it over his brow, maybe
collecting the sweat or maybe pushing the tension out of his
muscles.

‘
Jack . . . '
she said, but couldn't find anything to add. She wanted to
desperately plead that she hadn't done anything wrong, that she
hadn't come to the army base to spy on anyone, and that everything
had been a mistake. Instead, she just looked at him
carefully.

‘
Everything will be okay,’ he
said. Then he took a step away from her, eyes still locked on
hers.

Everything would
not
be okay. Celeste realized
quickly. There was no way it could be.

Chapter 12

Jack West

He had his head cradled in
one hand, and he fought the urge that told him to pick up the phone
and slam it into the wall.

‘
We don't know anything,’ he
tried for the hundredth time. ‘It could have just been an accident.
The Yaoguai may have simply decided to change direction. There is
no evidence it was running from her.’

‘
We have the sworn testimony of
two of your soldiers suggesting they saw it freeze, scamper
backwards, and run from her. They confirmed that they heard the
Yaoguai give out what could only have been described as a
distressed noise. Noises that they had never heard before.
Lieutenant Commander, we do not need to remind you that your team
is one of the most experienced we have. If your soldiers have
confirmed that they have seen behavior from that Yaoguai that has
never been documented before, then we need to look into this,’ the
clipped, fresh tones of Harvey, one of the Knight security
advisers, filtered down the phone line.

Jack wanted to pick up the
receiver and slam it down on the desk. He knew what they were
asking, but how the hell could they ask that?

‘
Look, we can't put a civilian
under any direct threat—’ Jack began.

‘
We must find out as much about
the Yaoguai as we can. Tonight they have displayed behavior we have
never seen. We must confirm this,’ Security Advisor Harvey's words
were quick and clipped.

Jack balled up a fist and tapped
it tensely on the desk before him. ‘Just what are you
suggesting?’

‘
You have a Yaoguai. You managed
to catch the one that escaped. I am suggesting you put it into
containment, and then you bring this Celeste Cross into the room
with it. She will be under no direct threat. That Yaoguai is a
lower form, the glass cage you have at Gresham City Base will be
more than enough to contain it for the time being. All you have to
do is bring her into the room, and see how it reacts. If it rushes
towards her, just as a Yaoguai would towards anything it considered
food, then we know everything is normal. However, if it in any way
shows fear . . . ' Harvey trailed
off.

Jack hit the desk. Then he
opened his palm and gripped his fingers onto the edge of it.
Then what?
He thought bitterly. If the
Yaoguai shows fear towards Celeste, what exactly would Knight do to
her?

Jack didn't need the
security adviser to tell him that in Knight's history, and in every
single document he'd ever managed to scrounge up on the Yaoguai,
there had been no evidence to suggest they were afraid of anything.
The Yaoguai didn't fear humans or animals; they simply viewed them
as food. They were vicious, and that was really the end to them.
They feared nothing, and yet, Jack couldn't deny his senses. He too
had seen the Yaoguai jump towards Celeste, only to freeze, reverse
direction, whimper, and then run away. Though he really wanted to
tell himself that the Yaoguai's actions could be explained, he
couldn't deny the possibility that it had been scared of
her.

Scared of Celeste. Scared of
a human. What did that mean?

‘
I expect you to follow through
with this order,’ Harvey said. ‘I want immediate confirmation once
you've tested this out.’

With that, the phone line
began to beep as Harvey's voice cut out.

For a few seconds Jack just
sat there, fingers gripping the table harder.

Then he forced himself to
his feet.

He had to go and find
Celeste. Though he hated to put her in danger, Knight was right;
they needed to find out just why that Yaoguai hadn't attacked
her.

As he walked through the
corridors, the bright lights above him casting his hands and legs
into shadow, he remembered something. Back when the first Yaoguai
had attacked her, in her bathroom, that one had reversed direction
too, hadn't it? It had slammed through the door, forced him into
the bath, then, with one look Celeste's way, it had run from the
room.

At the time, he'd thought
nothing of it. He'd thought that the Yaoguai had been distracted by
something, but that it had intended to run back into the room when
the coast was clear to gobble up Celeste.

Jack planted his thumb and
forefinger into his temples and dug in.

Just what was going on
here?

Celeste Cross

For want of a better term,
she was in a cell. It was solid concrete, and had a simple
low-slung bed on one side with a very thin mattress. She was
sitting on the mattress, back pressed up against the wall, legs in
front of her, arms clasped tightly over the fabric of her loose,
black pants.

They weren't going to let
her go this time, were they? She could kick herself for having been
so stupid. If she hadn't taken a wrong turn, if she hadn't headed
up towards the army base, none of this would have happened. She
wouldn't now be sitting in this cell, probably facing a life of
imprisonment, or worse.

Though Celeste wasn't one
for overreactions, she was having trouble seeing how the army was
going to let her go this time. She'd heard those two soldiers, and
she'd seen Jack's face – the way the Yaoguai had reacted around
her, it had surprised the hell out of them.

Not for the first time,
Celeste closed her eyes and tried to get a handle on her
emotions.

She tried to stop her
thoughts, bringing her attention back to her breathing whenever she
could. As soon as a flicker of fear danced through her gut, she
paid full attention to it, following it wherever it twisted. She
stopped viewing it as fear, and started treating it simply as a set
of sensations. As she did, the worry and palpable sense of dread
started to drop away from her. Her analytical mind gained a
foothold, and she pushed herself to take a more rational
perspective of the situation.

She had no information to go
on right now, only supposition. Considering she'd just had a
fraught and adrenaline-fuelled run-in with something that she had
previously thought could not exist, she couldn't trust her
hormone-addled mind to make a reasoned decision.

Just as she was getting a
handle on herself, the door opened. It was a slow move, and the
metal hinges creaked. She blinked her eyes open and turned her head
to it.

It was Jack.

Though she hadn't known him
for long, she'd never seen him hold an expression like that. It
looked as if he was trying to control every last movement of every
single muscle. He seemed like he was stopping himself from
appearing angry, frustrated, or frightened. He just had this
plastered, sallow, and forced look of calm about him.

He took a step into the
room, body coiled with tension. Then he nodded her way.

She unwound her arms from
around her legs and straightened up.

‘
We need you to do something,’
his voice was quiet.

She pushed herself off the
bed. She didn't say anything.

He took a quick breath, but it
was shallow and short. ‘Look, there's no other way, I tried to get
them to understand . . . ' he trailed off and
shook his head sharply. ‘We need you
to. . . . ' Whatever he wanted to say, it
appeared he couldn't bring himself to say it.

She didn't have any shoes
on, for some bizarre reason they'd been taken from her. Maybe it
was standard military procedure. Maybe they didn't want her using
them as weapons to clobber anyone who walked in the room, or maybe
some creative person thought she’d rip off the straps and do
herself some damage or something. Her feet were cold as they
pressed into the bare concrete underneath her. She paid attention
to the sensation, then locked her gaze back on Jack.

‘
You want me to go and meet one,
don't you?’ she said, just as the thought popped into her mind.
‘One of those Yaoguais.’

Jack stiffened at her words,
nodding. ‘Look, it's not my idea. But we'll be there, my entire
team will be there, there will be no threat.’

She offered him a small,
contained sort of nod. ‘I understand.’ She didn't really
understand . . . or maybe she did. Knight were
dealing with an incredible threat, so they were duty-bound to look
into every possible way of mitigating it. If it meant potentially
saving the lives of everyone on the planet, she knew they wouldn’t
hesitate to use her.

Celeste had never been in a
position of responsibility, or at least not one like Jack was in
right now. Though she knew it was her neck on the line, she didn't
envy his position.

She tried to keep a firm
hold on her emotions. Chasing down every single sensation of fear
that escaped across her back and belly, she kept calming
herself.

She gave him another shallow
nod. ‘It's okay,’ she finally supplied.

Jack clenched his jaw at
that, lips curling, but he nodded. He latched a hand on the door
and pushed it open. The invitation was obvious – she was meant to
follow him.

Her feet slapping against
the cold concrete, she walked out of the room, sure not to get too
far away from Jack, not because she needed him for protection, but
because she feared if she took a step in the wrong direction,
they'd clamp her in handcuffs and drag her away. Okay, maybe not
drag her, and maybe they wouldn't use handcuffs, but she understood
that right now she didn't have a choice in what she was doing, and
if she didn't acquiesce politely, they would use force.

She followed him through the
building, and she couldn't help but notice the stares that people
gave her. Men and women in different uniforms all paused as they
walked along to gawk at her. Their expressions were all a variation
on the same theme: surprise, shock, maybe even hesitant
fear.

It was a sobering
experience. No one had ever looked at Celeste as if they'd been
intimidated before. She wasn't particularly tall, she certainly
wasn't well-built, and she really didn't look like she could put up
much of a fight. Plus, her mother had always told her she had one
of those faces that you couldn't help but adore. She wasn't covered
in scars, piercings, or tattoos, and she didn't have a violent look
about her. But right now a cold sweat ran down her back as she
tried not to pay too much attention to the frightened looks she was
getting.

Eventually Jack walked down
a set of stairs, deep into the building, until they finally arrived
at some kind of basement.

He led her around the corner
to a large, menacing steel door. There were two guards posted
either side of it, assault rifles at the ready, and they nodded
quickly at Jack. One snapped a salute as the other opened the
door.

Tension clasped and groped
at Celeste’s body as she walked into the room.

Though she knew what she was
about to face, and even though she'd come to terms with it, it was
the context that made her shake. It was funny, somehow she could
understand the Yaoguai and overcome the fear they instilled in her,
but the base was a different thing. While she'd learnt over the
years to deal with the monsters in her dreams, she could hardly use
the same method to deal with being a prisoner of the army. Or, if
not a prisoner, then the kind of person you do not simply let
wander off.

The room around her was
large and starkly lit. There was only one thing in it – a glass
cage. It sat right in the middle, the base of it sunk into the
concrete and secured there by large metal clamps. The glass was
probably a good 30 centimeters thick, and the cage itself was
massive. Inside it was a Yaoguai. She thought it was probably the
same one she'd seen on the road outside the military
base.

Now it was stuck inside the
cage, she could finally see exactly what it looked like.

It had the semblance of an
animal, with a long tail, pointed snout, and a round back. It had
long, sharp claws. It looked like a cross between a wolf and a
monkey, with a flexible twisting tail. The tail was forked, and the
creature was completely hairless. It also appeared to be composed
of translucent blue energy. The energy crackled along it, and
puffed into what looked like smoke that twisted its way through the
glass cage.

It was an arresting
sight.

Celeste couldn't help but
stare at it, transfixed. She had faced many monsters in her dreams
before, but never anything like this. She'd always been in control,
or at least when she'd been lucid dreaming. Now she was staring at
a monster, a real-life monster, and there would be no waking up
from this nightmare.