Dreams’ Dark Kiss (6 page)

Jay continued, “Never mind she’s back in the Waking World safe as houses.”

Fraudulent smart-ass
. If it weren’t for Jay showing up and outing him Ciaran would still be with Keoni. He opened his mouth to inform both those clowns that based on what he’d seen, Ciaran could very well be in danger and might need him. Archer’s voice cut off the opportunity.

“Much as I’d enjoy psychoanalyzing Keo’s issues, we don’t have the time.”

Empty space one minute and Archer filled it the next. He leaned over the armchairs, one hand clasping the back of each. Black smoke wisped at the cuffs and collar of his greatcoat, then settled into cloth and stitch. Every now and then Keoni wondered if the coat lived. As ridiculous as a sentient garment sounded, the thing was not made of materials found in a fabric stor— Wait. What?

“’Ey, whachu mean issues?” He threw his hands wide, his accent returning full force. He could never stop the pidgin from sneaking back into his speech when he got emotional. “I got issues?”

Silence met the question; silence and three looks of complete disbelief. Alexi might’ve had a tick up his nose. Jay studied the tin ceiling. Archer sighed and walked around the only empty seat in their grouping. He made himself comfortable—his back remaining I-beam straight—leaned on the chair arm and studied Keoni. Their squad leader’s black-on-black eyes held the quality of his raven’s plumage, taking on green or blue luster depending on the light. His jaw worked in an effort Keoni recognized as preamble to making a decision.

“I’ll say it, but we don’t have the time to discuss. Understand?”

Not many men could get away with Archer’s tone of superiority in reference to Keoni. He’d usually dismiss their presence on the earth. But this was Archer, and Archer was his brother. Whatever he had to say, it was truth.

“We worry your need to be there for everyone is going to get you killed. It’s not possible for a man to take care of everyone in his life at all times. It splits your focus and makes you vulnerable.”

Keoni’s lips thinned into a hard line. Did they think him a liability? Even knowing why he acted the way he did? “Bodda you?”

“I’d be bothered if you die,” Archer replied, his accent as impossible to place as ever. Wherever he hailed from he meant what he’d said: there’d be no discussion today. To prove it, he turned away from Keoni to address the squad as a whole.

“The guild has been monitoring some fairly aberrant ankou behavior. A pack has sprung up in Atlanta—”

“Pack?” Jay said incredulously, asking the question they’d all leaned forward to hear answered. “Ankou don’t do packs.”

“I know this.” Archer lifted a hand to accept his drink from a barmaid. “Thus the use of the term
aberrant
.” He thanked her with a nod and a slight smile. The woman lingered, entranced.

She had to be a new hire. The other straight women and those of the male servers—a bunch of Clark Kent, professorial types—whose preferences ran to men had grown accustomed to Archer’s foreign—as in not quite human—beauty.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Keoni said, breaking the spell. The woman hustled off, a bit dazed but looking pleased about it.

Archer turned his nod of thanks to Keoni, rolled his shoulders and continued. “They’re forming packs, yet they’re not attacking. Instead they hide out in homes, businesses and homeless camps.”

“Waiting.” Alexi drained his beer in one swallow and placed the empty bottle with its mates.

Their leader nodded. “It’s why we haven’t sensed them for extermination as we normally would. If it weren’t for the abomination of their latest psychic tortures, we wouldn’t know now. I’d share some of the psychic impressions we squad leaders have received with you but, trust, you don’t want this stuff mucking up your mind.”

Running a hand over his forehead, he used the other to remove an elastic band from the inside breast pocket of his greatcoat. He slipped it over his head and back to hold his shoulder-length hair from his face. “The other squad leaders and I suspect someone’s manning the works. They’ve been on the move, so we haven’t confirmed but we’re scanning ATL for them now.”

Jay’s excitement seemed to buzz in the air around him. “But we’ll be the ones sent to take them out once they’re located?” he said,
 
hopeful anticipation reshaping his face.

“We’ll be the ones going in,” Archer said, “but it’ll be to contain them, gather info and ascertain whether they’re evolving, and if so, just what they’re evolving into. We need to study them this time, Freefall.”

Archer’s clarification of their mission and pointed use of Jay’s nickname did nothing to deaden the frenetic energy surrounding Jay. His reckless abandon had earned him the tag Freefall.
All
jump. No parachute. Case in point, the time Jay had decided to take on an ankou in his Waking World body—mostly powerless. He’d won, but it’d taken four broken beer bottles and two weeks to heal afterward. Keoni shook his head. Alexi might have been willing to die for what he believed in, but Jay—Keoni quelled the thought of losing his best friend—Jay stalked death.

“And your new mate,” Archer said, drawing Keoni’s attention. “Did she seal the path behind her?”

Keoni reflected back on the moment Ciaran had popped out of the dreamscape. A dream guardian or psychopomp’s sealing the Dreaming after an exit meant the difference between their Waking World safety and the banes trailing them through a direct line to their brain. Once the banes had locked on, they’d ambush you whenever you entered the dreamscape. With the ankou, it led to much worse.

Keoni understood the need for the question, but had Archer’s mouth tightened at the mention of Keoni’s
new mate?
He wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but there was something wrong there—something off-kilter enough to file away for later examination.

“Yeah, she did. Pretty much on autopilot.”

This time a hint of appreciation lifted the corner of Archer’s mouth in complete contradiction. Definitely off-kilter.

“I figured as much. It’d come naturally to her as a psychopomp. Couldn’t be certain her emerging Somnian abilities hadn’t thrown it off, though.” Archer inclined his head to one side, apparently thinking things through.

“My only worry is, if they’ve organized both here and in the Dreaming, they’ll be able to triangulate her position using—”

Black smoke erupted from the greatcoat. No, instead the coat transmuted into smoke—puffed out in distorted spires. Narrowed eyes preceded Archer’s command.

“Move!” he barked. Then went astral.

Keoni fell in line behind Archer, hurling his
kami
into the kaleidoscope tunnel between the Dreaming and the Waking World. He’d always pictured going astral as flipping open the closures on a guitar case, allowing the instrument within to come to life. There was usually a beauty to it, a certain sense of peace. But this time around, the abruptness of the act doused him in the spiritual equivalent of cold water.

Fighting in the Dreaming using nothing but the power of your mind was a hard rub. Projecting an astral version of yourself—your kami—into the Waking World, encompassing all the abilities of your dream form but imbued with enough power to hold physical sway, was three or four clicks down the line. The two things were related yet wildly disparate; a comparison between strumming a guitar and fending off the attack of a hatchet murderer—with your bare hands. Both could be called
handling an ax
, but the latter took precedence on the meet-your-maker scale. And just to establish a baseline, the Somnian version of strumming a guitar could kill you at your best.

Keoni’s inner light flickered in response to a soft rumbling. He’d forgotten to eat. Again. He groaned, and his empty belly grumbled, the world
in
famous never-ending gullet. The only stomach capable of reaching across time, space and the Dreaming to make its displeasure known.
Feed me,
it growled, going Audrey II, the singing, man-eating plant from
Little Shop of Horrors
.

More grumbling. More flickering.

Horrific just about covered the amount of food Keoni could put away too, if his
tutu
’s complaints and well-aimed broom swipes bore any witness.

Keoni could deal with his grandmother, but he’d pay for the empty stomach he’d left at home. First with the cost of breaks in concentration, and second from the power drain. The usual fatigue accompanying the kami form was going to be a bitch to recoup from with no fuel to burn. All Somnians dealt with the bone-weariness of returning to their bodies after going astral, but none of the others had the never-ending gullet to contend with.

Think about something else…

Keoni shifted his body weight and flowed from one side of the multihued tunnel and back. The trip between worlds took seconds, but those seconds stretched, giving Somnians lots of time to think. It had to be part of the grand design—to peace them out before battle.

When Keoni thought about it, the others had their own issues to contend with: Jay with his suicidal tendencies and Archer—heh—Archer tended to sing in his sleep. They could hear his voice in the background while they battled. Those impromptu soundtracks were how they’d learned he spoke a fourth or fifth language, which likely explained his “where the hell are you from?” accent.

Keoni chuckled, and the presence of Alexi’s and Jay’s kamis resonated behind him. Without extending his senses, he knew Jay had chosen to bring up the rear. The idea he might have to literally save their asses one day appealed to Jay with the same intensity the need to protect the squad by going in first compelled Archer.

An echo of panic tugged Keoni’s awareness away from his brahs. A soul’s ache tethered to its body by a strand as tenuous as spider silk. He veered slightly left from the path Archer had chosen; Keoni figured on entering the Waking World somewhere near his squad, but at a different point. Archer would be pissed, but Keoni needed to answer the call. He only hoped to arrive in time.

Surging forward, the Hawaiian brought his right hand up, perpendicular to his body. His fingers splayed against the final membrane cementing reality to dreaming. The rubbery texture pressed back, buoyant, alive. He synced with it, sending the force of his will down his biceps, through the forearm and out in five points of blue-white light. The membrane responded, folding outward into the Waking World in the five petal-shaped sections emanating from his four fingers and along the path of his lifeline.

Now he’d just need to project his kami from the tunnel and into the living room spread out before him. Excitement mixed with anxiety hit his bloodstream. The anxiety flared a warning and slowed his progression. Acrid bloodlust and perversion thickened the air, and he hadn’t even stepped out into the Waking World yet.

This shit does not feel right.

K’den
,
okay,
he’d follow Archer’s orders on two levels and go against the squad’s modus operandi of bursting through the fabric of reality and jaw jacking anything moving. It wasn’t easy to squelch the compulsion. They always busted in and jaw jacked anything moving. His squad was good at it, and he wanted to slay the woman-shaped figure cradling the child by the fireplace and the other two creatures he sensed in the room so badly his hands balled into fists. Going in recklessly wouldn’t help. He hoped to save the child and he didn’t have much time left. Trust the universe to supply an instance dependant on urgency but necessitate he go slow.

Keoni hadn’t arrived in time once before. Being late again was not an option.

He reached out, feeling the last remnants of the child’s soul beckon him. She had all but been extinguished, and if he rushed at the creature imprisoning her, she might be lost.

Strobing on the walls of the tunnel, painted across the back of the sofa and on the carpet, caught his attention, and he looked down at the source of the light. His fisted hands pulsed in sharp relief against the backdrop of reality.
Aznuts.
Ridiculous. The photonegative effect of his kami illuminated his astral form from within, transforming blacks to white light and shadows to gradated blue glow. When a strobe-light effect hit, it reflected overabundance of emotion. He’d have to find a way to harness the feelings.

He tried. It didn’t work. Too eager and unable to control the emotions a moment longer, Keoni stepped into the suburban home anyway.

Extending his left arm behind him, he turned his fingers counterclockwise and willed the five-petal opening to knit back together, sealing the path behind him.

Cacophonous battle sounds filled his ears. Past the opening from the dining room, adjacent to the room he occupied, he could see into the kitchen and through to the backyard. Archer, Jay and Alexi had harnessed their spirit energy—they sent heads rolling, broke spines and wreaked general havoc on eight ankou. Something must have gone wrong. His brahs had abandoned all efforts to observe the ankou. They probably had Jay to blame or maybe to thank. Either way their group MO remained intact.

Archer had nailed it. The ankou were amassing as a pack. Keoni hadn’t seen more than two band together before, and then only when a couple had somehow been taken over at the same time.

At least he needn’t have worried about startling the inhabitants of this room. His primary target, the female ankou holding the girl, still hadn’t stirred from her place by the fire. If the roar of his brahs stomping her pack mates to mud pies hadn’t fazed her, he doubted his arrival could.

With an arm as leverage he vaulted the plaid couch and landed soundlessly on the other side. An inch or so more to the left and he’d have tripped over the victim lying half on, half off the sofa. The victim, a man, was close to turning full ankou. Pale khaki fur covered his flesh and his face had grown decidedly hyenalike.

It needed to be dealt with now. A growl escaped Keoni’s lips unbidden. He didn’t have the time to stall or bemoan the fact Somnians were blunt instruments when it came to ankou, exterminators at best. Useless to dream of saving lives the way he once did. Killing banes weighed heavy on the
good fun
scale. They were nightmares that had grown grotesque. Keoni viewed taking banes out no differently from squelching a bad idea. Every ankou, however, had once been a person in pain—a living soul. And no, his pangs of conscience did not assuage the risk of letting the creatures live, never had.

A quick kill or when this thing—no longer a man—awoke as an ankou, it would attack. Keoni wouldn’t allow its revival to hinder his mission. He needed to save the girl.

Decision made, he kept his eyes on the still unmoving figure by the fireplace and split his attention between the little girl cradled to its breasts and the quickly transforming creature at his feet.

He dropped to one knee, pressing it into the prone figure’s back. His fingers stole around the furry neck and jerked, snapping the spine in a concise strike. The bones broke in a two-part crack.

Cold, yeah, but he’d learned to set the coldness of such things aside long ago. There was nothing left of the man. Even if there were, nothing could have been done for him. Years ago Keoni had hoped to find a way to save those taken over by ankou, dreamed of—even prayed for—a solution. None had come. Dream guardians didn’t possess the philanthropic ranking of howlers or pyschopomps or any of the others. Mercy lay in eradication.

He’d keep telling himself that.

Low to the ground, Keoni crept to a second ankou-possessed body. It rested in a slumped but upright position on the nearby love seat. This victim had been a teenaged boy, a younger version of the man whose neck Keoni had just broken. No doubt the peach fuzz on the boy’s chin had brought him pride before his possession. Now it competed with thick tufts of ankou fur.

Lips set in a hard line, Keoni had to wonder at the justice. This straggly precursor to manhood was all the boy got? No. He and his brahs or the other dream-guardian squads should have caught the ankou pack while they were in bane form and confined to the Dreaming; they could’ve prevented this family from suffering these atrocities.

But then,
should’ve
didn’t rank in the world of a Somnian. He pushed emotion aside. Good thing the job had made him practical. Doing what he could would have to suffice.

A quick tug on the leg and the body plopped onto the cushions. The boy’s neck emitted the same sound as his father’s when the bones broke. But the sound was not the reason Keoni winced.

Silence. The red-cloaked figure remained oblivious. If he didn’t know an ankou hid beneath the hood, the scene would appear cozy—a mother comforting a child.

He crept closer unnoticed. What dark work prevented the creature from sensing a mortal enemy stalked from only a foot away?

Keoni slowly rose above the love seat to check on the squad’s progress. Only three ankou remained. Good. He had time before the brahs sought him out.

Stretching his senses while watching for any movement, Keoni reached out to the child and somehow connected with her. Only a strand still held her spirit to her body, but as he slipped deeper, he became entangled in the intersecting threads of her mind, fears of failure and of ridicule, woven into the spider’s web of a single nightmare. Mists like those found in the dreamscape, but grayed and viscous as slime folded over Keoni, sucking greedily at him until he’d been completely entombed in the child’s terror.

A heartbeat, two, and the red cloak began a slow slither along the lines of the web. It reached out for him, the hem forming a tongue to taste his skin. Licks of fire met each flicker of the cloak’s edge. Keoni cursed it, straining at the web but the strands held. The cloak eased back, waving in the air, a crimson cobra with its hood extended. It darted forward, snaking around his chest in layer after layer, inching toward his head. When it finally covered his face, the true horror of the night played out, projected film-style onto the wrappings over his eyes. The little girl shared her story.

Her name used to be Emma. She and her mother had sewn the cloak as a special project. They’d taken joy in their work and excitement from imagining the costume on the stage. Phantom echoes of their laughter rang through Keoni. The sound twisted more cords of nightmare around his struggling limbs and choked off his connection to everything else. Only Emma remained… She had won the lead in her school’s production of
Little Red Riding Hood
. The role thrilled and terrified her, but her mother assured her she’d be great. “The best Riding Hood evah,” and Emma believed, unable to see past her mother’s smiles into the pit of fear warping the woman’s every thought.

Keoni lay paralyzed at the center of the web, the cloak squirming over his face and chest, stealing energy where it lapped his kami.

A third consciousness wove its way into the threads tying Keoni to Emma’s fractured mind.

Mommy spent her nights in terror—never able to turn her thoughts from the evening news and all the misfortunes befalling families each day. She worried constantly, and her anxiety gave a bane on the hunt an opening. It dug its claws into her soul and in time chewed its way into the Waking World. By then Mommy had become a twisted pit of affections, and she perverted so easily. So deliciously well.

A fourth mind had joined the fray.

Craziness. Too many minds rushed Keoni’s. The little girl, her mother and now the bane all commingled into a single twisted consciousness. Keoni could hear the bane’s voice. An actual vocalization of its intent. He hadn’t known banes wielded voices within the minds of their victims—snarled sounds made of howling winds and dank places. Keoni’s jaw hardened. An overload of thoughts converged on him at once. The sound repulsed him.

He began to struggle again but the cloak wrapped tighter, pulling him back down into numbness. They weren’t done with him yet.

The ankou who had once been a loving mother, Mommy, knew her family so well it hadn’t taken long to change them, to usurp their minds and through them build bridges to the Dreaming. Soon her perfidy birthed three more ankou into the Waking World. Ankou born of her family’s flesh.

Lastly, to prove their hopes were gone, she wore Emma’s cloak. Twisting a symbol of motherly love, sewn for her daughter’s greatest triumph, into the child’s destruction.

Keoni had been wrong, and he cursed himself for a dumbass. He hadn’t seen the lure or the trap. No part of Emma remained. Mommy had tormented her child into nothingness.

His stomach growled. It reached through the thickened mist, reconnecting him to the Waking World and causing the beasts’ hold over him to waver. His revulsion did the rest. He burst free of the crimson bindings and the web. He’d never bemoan his insatiable hunger again. Awareness returned, and he found himself back in the living room, crouched before the red-cloaked ankou. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, but the gesture couldn’t chase away the foul taste on his tongue.