Bring Me A Dream: Reveler Series 5 (5 page)

She tried to see him as he really was, but his inscrutable face only looked back at her. Calm, contained. A perfectly crafted everyman. His illusion was impenetrable, so she almost couldn’t believe it. But yes, the nightmare had backed away from him.
Steve Coll
, she repeated the name to herself.

Vincent was putting his shoe back on, so she notched her chin toward Steve. Maybe her father had nightmare children everywhere. Seemed like something he’d do. “Could we be related?”

Steve shook his head. “Grew up in Tucson, Arizona with a deadbeat dad and mother who thought I was a demon from Hell.”

“Hmm.” She had so many other questions for him. Like, how had he survived on his own? And did everyone know his secret? What could he do Darkside? Were they really nightmares? Had they been born…bad? But all of those questions got stuck in the bottleneck of her throat.

“We’d better move on,” Steve said. “Get somewhere we can speak a little more freely.”

“You’ll tell me what those nightmares are doing in the waking world,” Vincent said to him.

“We’ll discuss what I know,” Steve said. “But not here.”

“Do you at least have a plan yet?” Vincent demanded, reading her mind.

It’d been a couple of hours since the interrogation room Darkside. What had they done with the opportunity that she and Vincent had bought them?

“Follow me.” Steve led them out of the terminal onto 42nd Street. He raised a hand and flagged a cab. The three of them slid into the back seat, Vincent beside her. Steve gave an address to the driver.

“I thought we were supposed to fly under the radar,” Vincent said dryly. “Stay away from places we’d be recognized.”

“There’s no way to avoid it this time,” Steve answered. “Not if you’re going to be seen with Mirren publicly anyway.”

She didn’t understand. “Where are we going?”

“My place,” Vincent said.

She’d been distracted in the station by Steve, but used the time in the cab to try and figure Vincent out. Darkside appearances were occasionally very different than they were in the waking world. Darkside, his internal turmoil had been readily apparent on his person. He’d had dark, intense eyes. His stress showed in every line of his body. His hands had been covered with black blood, and his arms and body and neck had been splattered with the stuff. Altogether, he’d been the hottest man she’d ever met. Course, it had helped that he was ready to murder her father at the time.

But in the waking world, Vincent was a little too good-looking. The dark blond hair surprised her, green eyes, the flash of movie-star teeth. The cut of his hair indicated he was used to being groomed. His skin was no longer stained by nightmare blood. It had a fading tan—not a work-in-the-sun tan either. A practiced tan. All of it meant that here he was less the madman, more high maintenance.

She caught Steve Coll’s sidelong glance; he appraised her as she appraised Vincent, who was staring at the creep of yet another nightmare across the street, stalking some poor woman who was almost running to get away. The cab moved past her.

“Another one,” Mirren said, dread pooling in her belly at what the future would bring.

“So it would seem,” Vincent said. And
there
, in his tone, was the darkness she knew of him. What a contradiction he was.

“Then we’d better do something about it,” Steve said.

The cab stopped at a tall, silver building where the sidewalk was scrupulously clean and a uniformed doorman stood at the glass-and-steel entrance. They scooted out of the car, and Steve took care of the driver.

“Mr. Blackman,” the doorman said, pulling the large door open. His gaze lingered on Mirren’s attire, but he was careful not to show a flicker of response.

Which made Mirren smile. She’d been reared in a kind of luxury, too—a house with staff, good food, nice things, even if she hadn’t been allowed to choose them. But it had been a quiet and old-fashioned life. Removed. Restrained. Silent. This place was black marble and silver, masculine and cold, yet she didn’t mistake the current of energy that ran through it, as if it were a lightning rod of wealth and power. If Vincent lived here, he was a man of means.

“I’ve misplaced my key, Mike,” Vincent told a man at a desk in the lobby. “Mind helping me out?”

“Certainly, Mr. Blackman.”

Mirren didn’t miss how Steve was watchful about everything, as if he didn’t trust them, and didn’t want them behind him.

The elevator didn’t go all the way to the top, as she’d hoped—so Vincent had money but not
the most
money. It opened to a short, mirrored hallway with two doors on opposite ends. Vincent moved to the left, and Mike used a master key to let him inside. Vincent pressed a keypad on the inside wall to disable the alarm system, and Mike promised to have the door locks re-keyed as soon as possible.

The apartment was decorated in soft grays and browns, the textures natural and subdued. Deep-blue accents snagged her eye, but no personal possessions of any kind littered the surfaces. To the far left, the kitchen was identifiable only by the nub of a central sink. The cupboards were a high-gloss, flat checkerboard of the palest gray. The place was tasteful and utterly devoid of character.

“We’ll have to call out for food,” Vincent said, again reading her mind. Or maybe he’d heard her stomach rumble. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. “There’ll be nothing in the kitchen. I’ve been living on the West Coast, stopping back here only a couple of times a year. I was putting it back on the market—had it redone to show—but then everything went south with Dad.”

Mirren strolled to see the view of Central Park. Very nice. “How’d your father get involved?”

Steve looked over, as if interested in the answer, too.

“Money,” he answered. “We needed capital for SpiderSly. Our company was stepping into Rêve with a new tethering concept, taking shared dreaming to the next level: tandem dreaming. We were poised to make a splash in the Rêve marketplace. Had the prototypes, just needed backing.” He trailed off for a second. “And we got unexpected interest from a man named Murray Graeme. I didn’t like him, but Dad was impatient. Things got out of hand. We both made bad choices.”

The forlorn drop in his last sentence made Mirren turn to look at him again, and she caught a glimpse of Darkside Vincent—pursued, haunted, wolfish. He stood lost in his own apartment as if he didn’t recognize the place, as if the place were wrong. Or he was.

She hadn’t known him for more than a day or two, but she understood just how badly things could get out of hand. How a person might think they were choosing the lesser of the evils, only to discover that all evils were the same.

Vincent attempted a smile. “And now the whole fucking world is different.”

“It’s about to get worse,” Steve said.

“Then I’ll call for food,” Vincent said. “Mirren, this might be our last meal. Any preferences?”

***

Vince ordered Thai for delivery, a task so mundane it felt surreal, and then seated himself across from Mirren in the great room. Her eyes had human color differentiation now, though she’d gone with her native gray for color. She had heavy white-blonde hair, blunt bangs, and thank God, her full lips had transcended the dreamwaters. Now, as then, they formed a hot pout of unhappiness. Her body was curvy, every rise and dip exposed by her skin-tight clothing.

His self-control had been severely compromised. Surges of dark emotion rolled over him without warning. But he used the last remaining shreds of his control to keep his gaze off—he couldn’t help checking again—yes, the manga Elvis cartoon printed on the T-shirt stretched over her breasts.

He squeezed his eyes shut and said to no one in particular, “Why again are those nightmares creeping around everywhere?”

“I don’t know,” Steve answered. “It’s a recent development. Nightmare activity has increased Darkside. They are closer than ever to the Rêves, and rumor has it they’ve infiltrated the black market as well.”

“Well, shit.” Vince opened his eyes again. Elvis looked back at him. He tried staring at his hands, but that didn’t help either. They appeared normal enough now. No stains in the waking world.

“You should be honored to be chosen by a nightmare,” Mirren said with a wry tone.

“Honored.” Sure, why not? Nothing made sense anymore.

“It means the Sandman favors you,” she explained. Still droll.

The Sandman. Right. Seemed everyone was jumping on his bandwagon.

“The nightmare I saw earlier?” Vince looked Mirren right in the eyes. “For a second it was my father.”

Steve leaned in, elbows on his knees. “Malcolm Rook has seen one, too. His took the form of his dead little brother.”

The dead brother sounded very sad, but relief washed over Vince. He wasn’t going crazy. There was even a logic to it. “So they appear in the form of what screws with our minds?”

Steve cocked his head. “Apparently, yes. However—”

Vince tensed with dread. “What?”

“If one can get close enough in the waking world, it can drag you into sleep and out into the Scrape. It’s what happened to Jordan.”

Vince flushed again. His vision swam with dark blotches. He shook his head, denying what Steve said. Not possible. Dreams were dreams, or in his case bad dreams. Regardless, they existed Darkside. It was what supposedly made shared dreaming fundamentally safe. “Jordan never said anything like that. Just that she’d fought a nightmare in the Scrape.”

“The nightmare is how she got there,” Steve said. “Rook’s little brother grabbed hold of her…in the waking world…and pulled her into the Scrape.”

“No.” Vince felt as if he was falling, even though he was seated. He’d already been lost in that hellish Scrape once. The idea that something could simply reach out and take him back made the rush of anger almost unbearable. He wouldn’t believe it. “Where was it taking her? What did it want? What is Chimera doing about it?”

“We’re trying to figure out who the Sandman is.”

Steve had to be kidding. There were
nightmares
coming into the waking world, and Chimera wanted them to go after a fairy tale. They needed to
kill
Lambert, that’s what. He was stirring the nightmares up.

Vince turned to Mirren. “Why again should I be honored? What do you know about why one of those things came after me?” Because she
did
know something.

She shrugged. “Just what my father taught me. It’s an honor to be taken by a nightmare. It means you’ve been chosen by the Sandman. Special.”

“Who the fuck is the Sandman?” Still ludicrous.
A fairy tale
.

Mirren crossed her legs and shifted in her seat. Elvis winked at him from her breasts. “It’s not like I’ve met Him. My father never invited Him over to dinner. He’s—” she took a deep breath and did a lazy little wave of her hand, as if searching for the right words “—the power that dominates Darkside. Pure creation.”

“He’s
propaganda
at the very least,” said Steve. “The name Sandman is everywhere.”

Yes. Vince liked propaganda better. The Sandman was a tool. Marketing. Vince understood marketing. A kind of grass roots effort. “So Lambert is spreading ghost stories?”

“My father wouldn’t do that,” Mirren said.

Vince looked over and this time managed to keep his gaze north of her shoulders. “Seems to me something like the Sandman would be right up your father’s alley. Strike fear into the hearts of the masses.”

Mirren could never fear Him. The Sandman was an abstraction to her. He had not hurt her like her father had hurt her. And if the nightmares, indeed, belonged to Him, then part of her did, too.

“My father believes the Sandman is real,” she said. “That he is His voice in the waking world, responsible for preparing the way for the Sandman’s arrival.” She smiled with half her mouth. “I didn’t understand at first how Rook didn’t know about him. But then I figured out that none of you grew up hearing about the Sandman, anticipating him. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about him. I am to be a god Darkside, too.”

“Yeah, the god thing passed me by,” Steve said.

“Don’t feel bad,” she told him. “
Demon
is pretty close.”

Vince shifted his gaze from Mirren to Steve, recalling their exchange in the train station. “You’re like her.” Not a question.

It was well known that some people had special abilities Darkside, a talent attributed in mainstream media to being more right-brained or whatever. Anyway, people could do things. Vince had been pretty comfortable in the dreamwaters himself once. He’d felt strong, invincible, as if he’d finally found where he belonged. Until recently, that is.

But now there were people who were part nightmare, too. Mirren was one, and he’d almost killed her for it. And this Chimera marshal, Steve Coll, apparently was, too.

“Yes. I’m like Mirren and her father.” Steve’s carefully controlled expression twitched. “In fact, Coll isn’t my real last name. I was born with a caul covering my ‘demon’ eyes, and so my mother called me ‘Steve-caul’ to remind herself, and me, of what I was, even though I learned to hide it as soon as I could. When I finally went to school, I thought
caul
was my last name. I didn’t know how to spell it correctly when I was five, so I’ve been
C-o-l-l
ever since. No one ever questioned it.”