Dream Walker (39 page)

Raze swallowed a hot retort and thought for a moment before answering him. Troy knew who Ichiban was, but not why he wanted Aislen. Raze knew who Aislen was and why
everyone
would want her. She was his ace.

As far as he could tell, Grant and The 8 didn’t know about her yet and Raze needed to make sure he was the one to inform them, before Troy figured it out and did it himself.

“It’s really none of your business,” Raze started. “But before you go and screw things up any further, I’ll tell you. During the course of this project, I discovered something...valuable information that The 8 will be extremely interested in. But I didn’t want to take it to them until I was completely sure of its validity.”

Raze faked a sigh of exasperation. “You have no idea how hard it has been—not eliminating these maggots as I would normally do. But I have to get a lock on this. It could be the biggest find of all time for The 8.”

“Really?” Troy said, his interest peaked. “What is it?”

Raze mirrored Troy’s pompous smirk right back at him. “That’s classified.”

Troy’s demeanor blackened. He glared at Raze and stalked up to him until they were chest to chest.

“I suggest you get on that then,” Troy seethed. “Figure it out—before
I
do. Because if Aislen has the answers, it won’t take me but a shot of Scotch and a couple of come hither twitches of my fingers and she’ll be moaning it to me as she’s calling my name.” Troy put two fingers in Raze’s face and wiggled them.

“You won’t get to her before I do,” Raze hissed back, eyes narrowed. “I’m already there.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Troy laughed and stepped away from Raze again. “You go ahead and do your thing. Stay in this little cage that Grant and Infinium has put you in and do what it is you do best. Be the last resort. In the meantime, I’ll be handling reality.” Troy turned to walk away, but turned back to say one more thing.

“You know, Raziel, I pity you. You never get the pleasure of seducing your young, virginal targets—suckling their juices dry and then slitting their supple throats. It’s so much more satisfying then your invisible mind-fuck.

“Hurry along now,” he said, shooing Raze off with a flick of his fingers as he backed away. “Because if I give Grant and The 8 what they want before you do, you’re going to need to find a place to hide.”

Troy reached up, lifted the visors off the top of his head, and severed the frequency modulators from his brain.

∞

Raze watched helplessly as Troy began to evanesce from Demesne. His last threat was the final straw and the rage Raze had swallowed down throughout their encounter reached its tipping point. He charged toward the disintegrating body, wanting to rip Troy apart himself but grabbed a hold of nothing but a billion splintered particles.

He bellowed, a roar so loud it rattled the glass throughout the towering skyscrapers that surrounded him—
like a cage,
he thought to himself.

Troy was right. Raze
was
just a pawn on the board, pushed around by the unseen fingers of Grant and The 8. Their go-to boy when they couldn’t handle something themselves, yet constantly pinned under their thumb.

It never bothered him before. He enjoyed what he did. He got off on using his ability to push people around, punishing them for all their stupidity...and cruelty...and sins. And he had everything he really wanted, didn’t he? He’d been given every worldly possession. He had been living the dream.

Now he was waking up to his nightmare.

Fury, like bile, rose up from deep in his belly. Raze let out another long, primal scream that sent a powerful shockwave through the atmosphere of Demesne. All of her buildings responded by spontaneously exploding, propelling razor sharp shards of glass, brick and mortar across the horizon faster than his eyes could entertain. Her remaining foundations collapsed and melted into the earth.

Raze watched as his creation atomized into nothingness. When the dust cleared, he was standing alone in the desert of The Stratum.

He had managed to destroy one prison only to find himself within another, incarcerated in a nested box of hells, forever doomed to solitary confinement. Raze was more a hostage then any of the maggots on Earth. At least they were blind to their bars. At least they had the illusion of freedom.

On the verge of madness, Raze roared again, this time he spewed the wrath out of his body. Fiery rays and molten orbs exploded from the palms of his hands and with rabid ferocity, Raze hurled them in every direction, hell-bent on destroying The Stratum once and for all.

Soon it was completely ablaze. Raze stood on a bubbling bed of lava, surrounded by a new cage of flames. He wished for the walls of the inferno to close in on him, to devour him. He longed to feel the blistering of his flesh and the incineration of his bones. But he could not. His form lay cool and safe within The Womb, while his phantom soul stood in Purgatory unable to destroy itself.

Raze leaned his head back, raised fisted arms at the sky and attempted to scream again, but something cracked inside of him and his wail came out a whimper. He had nothing left. Broken, he fell to his knees and dropped his head into his hands.

Raze watched as a single drop of water fell and hit the liquid fire of the ground. The tiny puddle boiled in the lava coagulating it to ash. He watched as another, and then another, fell to the enflamed earth, dousing it back to its original state of dry, ochre dust.

Were these tears? Was he crying? The idea that he could be crying crumbled the last bastion of his strength and Raze began to pound his fists into the ground. He would not be broken, damn it. Damn Grant, and Troy, and The 8 to hell! Damn all of Infinium! And damn Aislen for bringing him to this—bringing him to his knees—that she’d ever crossed his path, rearranged his circuitry or altered his frequencies. Aislen had ruined him.

As Raze continued to exact his vengeance on the earth, the sizzling sound grew louder. More and more droplets of water fell to the ground. Steam and smoke billowed up around him. Raze looked up through the haze at the cool sprinkles of water falling from The Stratum sky, baptizing his face, and calming his rage. He reached up and wiped them from his cheeks, so relieved to realize they weren’t tears, he almost wept for real. Across the landscape, the massive flames surrendered to the gentle shower that was not his creation.

Raze noticed movement on the horizon. A shadowy outline of a man walked toward him through the dying firestorm.

What now?
Who could that possibly be?
Raze rose from the ground, gathered himself together and readied himself to confront another possible threat.

“You can’t destroy this place, Raze
,” he heard the man say telepathically.
“At least not on your own. You’re strong, but not strong enough.”

“Who are you?” Raze yelled at the figure across the desert.

There was no answer. The patter of the falling raindrops silenced, the heavy globules crystallizing into flakes as the stranger walked closer. The prisms caught the soft light and danced with color as they floated to the ground, icing on the charred earth a frost white.

“You are on the wrong side of this, Raziel,” the blond stranger said when he finally stood before him. “You have been using your gifts for evil purposes for too long.” The man’s familiar green and gold eyes bore into Raze.

“Preston Reed.” Raze said with a growl that was both territorial and awestruck.

“You allowed the circumstances of your life to turn you like a whipped dog, becoming vicious and rabid, attempting to exact revenge on humanity for the wrongs of a few. You think you were made stronger by all this? You weren’t. You were diminished by it.”

“We have been looking for you.”

“Is it really
we,
Raze? I don’t think so. I think you know this now.
They
may be trying to find me, but trust me, they won’t.”

“You’re here, aren’t you? What’s to say I don’t seize your signature and start making you my mission in life?”

“Don’t pull your bullshit with me, Raze. You don’t think I’ve moved beyond that? I wouldn’t be here talking to you if I thought you were capable of tracking me. You aren’t. Give it up.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I need you,” Preston said. “To help Aislen.”

“To help Aislen?” Raze was taken aback. “Why would I help her? She is responsible for the—”

“She’s not responsible for anything,” Preston interrupted. “There was no intent behind her actions. She has no understanding of how her abilities work or how strong they are. You know that. But she
needs
to understand. She needs to learn. And now that I am being actively hunted again, I can’t get near her to teach her. Or protect her. I need you.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Raze scoffed. “You think I am the one to teach and protect her?”

“I know you are.”

Raze stopped laughing and stared at Preston. The man was serious. “You
are
out of your mind.”

“It isn’t too late for you, Raze. You can get on the right side of things. Aislen needs you.
I
need you to help her. At least get her out of harms way, so she has a chance to discover and develop her gift.”

“And why would I help her? Everything I know and am is barely hanging on by a thread. Why would I risk my—my life—for her. That’s what it would be you know, if I got between Infinium and Aislen.
My life.”

“I do know.” Preston nodded his head solemnly. “But I also know that you are her only hope.”

Raze didn’t know what to say to that.

“It’s not just Infinium that I am worried about. It is someone far worse.”

“Someone worse than Infinium and The 8? That isn’t possible.”

“Oh, but it is. And if he gets his talons into Aislen, you will see just how much worse it can be. You don’t want to see that, trust me.”

“Who is
he
?”

“My grandfather. The reason that Infinium exists.”

Raze didn’t know what to say to that, either.

“Raze, you can continue selling your soul to the highest bidder in order to cling to your perceived power or you can do the right thing for a change. It’s up to you. But I need to know. What’s it going to be?”

CHAPTER 42

They sped through the empty streets, Aislen and her mother, passing beneath the leafless trees that sat black and crooked against the midnight sky. Aislen couldn’t help but notice how tense her mother was. Her concern for Sergeant Mathis was apparent, but it was more than that. She obviously had deeper feelings for him and Aislen didn’t know how she felt about that.

She had always wished that her mother would try to find some happiness for herself—even a little romance—and although Mathis seemed like a nice enough guy, he had been asking too many questions, trying to associate Aislen with Blake and the murder of his father. For all she knew, he wanted to have her arrested.

And now that Aislen knew that her father had been around, watching over them and loving them all these years, she realized she didn’t want her mother moving on after all. She found herself carrying a small hope that one day her father would come back and they could try being a family.

She watched the motion blur of the streetlights through the window. The world outside passed her by like she wasn’t even a part of it. Her dream, although she could remember so little of it now, had felt more tangible, more real than actual reality did.

Aislen fingered the amulet resting against her neck. She traced the smooth metal of the spiral with an index finger wondering how on earth it had got there. It couldn’t have appeared out of thin air, could it? But after everything else she had experienced the past two days, she was starting to believe that anything was possible.

Beneath the purr of the engine and the hush sound of the wheels meeting the road, Aislen could hear a serene, hypnotic melody playing.

“Do you hear that?” she asked her mom.

“Hear what?” her mom said, so intensely focused on the road she didn’t peel her eyes away.

Aislen let go of the necklace and reached toward the radio to see if the volume was turned down too low. The music stopped, but Aislen found that the radio was already off.

She sat back in her seat, baffled. That was strange. She could have sworn she had heard something.

They were nearing the hospital now. Aislen could tell by the sickly florescent aura it projected into the sky. She would normally feel completely at home in a hospital, but she felt a flutter of anxiety in her chest. She unconsciously toyed with the pendant again. A barely perceptible vibration tickled her fingertip and the lilting refrain serenaded her again. Calm immediately settled upon her.

She lifted her finger off the pendant and the song stopped. She
was
hearing something. The music was coming from the amulet.