Dreamwalker (10 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The DiStephano family dynamic transformed with Tommy back under the roof that night. Mama D doted on her son and paraded him before the customers. Papa kept the same focus on his work, maintained the gruff facade. He still grilled items to perfection and added spices by the grain. But his step bounced a bit as he shuttled between prep table and stove. Each time Tommy entered the kitchen, Papa turned to douse a celebratory grin.

Tommy spent the end of the night in the kitchen. He stripped off the jacket and tie, flipped up the cuffs of his white dress shirt and joined his father. The two slipped into an easy, familiar duet. Between them, empty plates become frames for works of gastronomic art with precise amounts of entrée, pasta, and vegetables. The waitresses traded good-natured barbs with Tommy at each pickup.

The night flew by.

By closing, Pete saved a near feast for Tyrone and his sister. A half pan of tonight's special lasagna remained, good for a few dinners. He sealed it in cellophane and slipped out the back door at midnight.

Tyrone waited for him in the dumpster's shadows, shivering in his sweatshirt, probably the only outer layer of clothing the boy owned.

“Hey,” Pete said. “How's it going?”

“None too bad,” Tyrone answered, rocking back and forth to stay warm.

“You are going to love this lasagna,” Pete said. “Everyone does.”

Pete handed him the lasagna and a bag of rolls. Tyrone's eyes fell away in embarrassment as he took the food.

“Tyrone, I'm just helping you take care of your sister until your mother gets straight. It's no big deal.”

Tyrone looked him in the eye with a determination worthy of a much older man.

“I owes you, man,” he said. “An' I'm good for it for sure. This ain't no handout.”

An idea struck Pete.

“How about paying me back with some information?” he said. “Tell me about Jean St. Croix.”

Tyrone looked at Pete like he had asked for an envelope of anthrax.

“Jean St. Croix?” Tyrone said. “Whatchoo want with him? That brother's got the bad mojo like no one else. He's done eat up with it. He runs a tight crew that deals any drug you can think of. And cross him? Your life ain't nothing to him.”

“Where does he do business?” Pete said.

“Those Island Cabs you see all over, that's his office. Delivers better than Domino's. Gots drivers all over, all the time. Word is there's hundreds of them driving out of a warehouse on the west end. He's into witchcraft and shit to keep it all humming.”

The pieces fell into place. Island Cabs symbol and Cauquemere's medallion in Twin Moon City were variations on the same theme. The similarity was no coincidence. He doubted there were “hundreds” of Island cabs, but he gave credence to Tyrone's claim of witchcraft. It backed Prosperidad's revelations.

“You ain't gonna mess with him, is you?” Tyrone asked. The fear in his voice was genuine.

“No,” Pete lied. “Just confirming some things.” He changed gears to move the conversation away from St. Croix. “Your mother isn't back?”

“Nah,” Tyrone replied. “No word at all.”

“How far away do you live from here?” Pete said.

“Three blocks. Corner with Culpepper. Ain't far.”

“Well, get back over there,” he said. “Don't wake your sister when you get in. I'm off tomorrow, so I'll see you here again the night after. Stay out of trouble.”

“You the one talking 'bout St. Croix,” Tyrone said, shaking his head. “
You
stay out of trouble.”

Tyrone tucked his head, cradled the cube of lasagna like a football, and began a lazy jog back home.

An hour later, the last dish was stacked. The floor was bleached and mopped. The stainless steel shone. Papa and Mama sat talking with Tommy in the dining room. On his way to the door, Pete saw a long carving knife lying on the prep table's wooden top. Prosperidad's spool of copper rode heavy in his pants pocket.

The idea of winding copper wire around his bedposts like a homemade generator was absurd. Silly superstition.

Pete took one more step to the kitchen door and stopped again. He looked back at the knife.

But how could it hurt?

He palmed the knife and slid it into his work boot.

He told himself he did not believe.

Chapter Nineteen

There might have been something to that copper wire after all.

His intent tonight was to scout Twin Moon City and get a good look at Cauquemere's palace. Instead his dream that night began in safety of the mansion foyer, the one place hidden from Cauquemere. On the downside, the mansion also separated him from Rayna, and he longed to see her again. He wished he could take her here, or better yet, let her find her way here when he was awake. In the real world, he'd give her a key.

That was a thought. This
was
his dream. Maybe he could bend it a little. He had left a “reflection” of himself in Twin Moon City and had sealed the tunnel behind him on the way out. Perhaps he needn't be just a passive participant. According to Rayna, a dreamwalker brought power into this dimension. If there was anywhere he ought to be able to prove that true, the mansion was the place.

When he left the reflection the other night, the knowledge of how to do it just came to him. The same way when he sealed the tunnel. Ignorance, then epiphany. It was as if he
remembered
how to do it, but he never had the knowledge to begin with.

The idea for giving Rayna a key came to him that same way. Could it be…

He pulled open the front door. Beneath the knob, a bright gold key protruded from the keyhole. He extracted it.

A large tri-foil head topped the heavy, polished skeleton key. The shaft was slender as a pencil and about as long.

As he walked back through the mansion, the key warmed and trembled in his hand. He spread his fingers and let the key rest in his palm. It wiggled against his skin and then rotated on its center axis until the tip pointed at the front door. Pete moved his hand back and forth. The key spun like a compass needle, the tip always aimed at the mansion's entrance.

Just what he needed to give Rayna. It would lead her to the mansion, even if she didn't know where she was going.

He stuffed the key in his pocket. It went cool and inert.

He approached the trap door to Twin Moon City. He just needed a team of subconscious miners to have re-excavated the tunnel. He pulled open the door.

Apparently, the miners had put in some overtime. The tunnel was back. Blazing candles lit the way into Twin Moon City, and he hoped, Rayna. Pete descended the ladder and sprinted down the packed earth hallway.

This time, instead of opening at the city's edge, the subterranean passage ended abruptly at a solid earth wall. A wooden ladder went straight up into the darkness.

Pete pulled a candle from the wall and used its meager light to illuminate his ascent. Eight feet up, he came upon a door in the shaft wall. He plunged the candle into the earth behind him. He turned the knob and pushed open the door.

Indirect artificial light lit the other side. He stepped out onto a dirty, gray-carpeted room that was once a ground floor office. Rows of disheveled cubicles stretched out to the missing street-front windows. Weapons fire had shattered some of the cubicle walls. Burned and melted monitors stared back at Pete from each cubicle, cut down in the prime of their useful lives. White printed papers and the remnants of books littered the floor. Most of the acoustical panels in the drop ceiling were gone, and the few remaining light fixtures hung at crazy angles. The Twin Moon City branch of this business had been a bad investment.

Pete picked his way across the room, stepping around shredded reports and broken glass. He passed a stupid framed motivational business poster on the wall. It had a picture of a runner climbing stairs in an empty stadium. Underneath him, it said DETERMINATION IS THE DIFFERENCE. But the cracked frame hung upside down, and the man looked more as if he was falling down stairs, not climbing them.

At the front of the room was the receptionist's desk. The shattered sign behind it read AMERICAN FINANCIAL. The blasted receptionist's chair was reduced to wheels and a solitary stem. Pete ducked down behind the footwall.

Outside, streetlights gave the familiar ravaged streetscape of Twin Moon City a pale, lifeless glow. The taller buildings of the business district made the street into a canyon. Furtive movement flickered in the shadows across the street.

Pete shook his head. A city of souls reduced to a rat-like existence, hunted without rest. Visiting here without establishing residency was just fine.

He wondered how he'd find Rayna. Last time, she had found him. She said she could feel when he arrived. He hunkered down out of sight and rested against the desk drawers.

This visit, Pete was more attuned to the city. He sensed a subterranean flow running beneath his feet. Life force was being extracted, pulled in tiny streams in one direction, like veins returning from all over the body, back to the heart. Pete could almost take its pulse.

The blat of a gunner Jeep's exhaust reverberated in the artificial valley outside. The pop-thunk pattern of a firing machine gun peppered the air. Pete peered around the edge of the desk. The yellow truck speed closer to his building. The gunner randomly raked buildings' upper floors with tracer rounds. Pete pulled back under the desk. He gauged if he could make it back to the closet door exit if the zombie crew decided to stop in and check their 401K accounts.

The Jeep roared up. Rounds ricocheted around American Financial's upper floors. Glass and stone chips sprinkled from the façade into the street like some hail from Hell. The Jeep exhaust changed key and retreated. The diminishing sound of the gunner's insane laughter interrupted bursts of weapons fire.

That had been way too close for comfort.

The sound of footsteps crushing ceiling tiles came up behind him.

“Pete,” Rayna whispered.

“Right here,” he said. He pulled himself out from behind the desk and ran toward her voice.

He found Rayna tucked into a shattered cubicle near the rear of the room. No longer the girl the beach, she was back in her Twin Moon City rags.

“Aren't you the brave one tonight?” Rayna said.

“I don't get it,” Pete answered.

“You plopped yourself down one street over from Cauquemere's palace,” she said. “Do you wave red flags at bulls as well?”

Pete couldn't take credit for this alleged bravery. He didn't know why the tunnel came up in this building. He planned to case Cauquemere's stronghold. Maybe his conscious decided on the mission, and his subconscious carried out the details. He had a lot to learn about traversing this dimension.

“Just lucky I guess,” he said, “or unlucky if we get caught.”

Rayna stood and grabbed his arm. Her touch was electrifying. There was something about this girl…

She pulled him toward a steel exit door in the back wall. The door opened to a shadowy concrete stairwell. The air smelled stale and damp.

“I'll show you the layout from the roof,” Rayna said. “The stairwell is pitch black after we close the door. Just stick close. It's five flights up.”

She reached for his hand and Pete held it with reverence. The door closed behind them. The darkness was absolute.

Side by side, they worked their way up, feeling each step one at a time. The cold steel of the banister slid through Pete's right hand, Rayna's soft skin warmed his left. They trudged up each set of risers, their shuffling feet resounding against the concrete walls. Pete lost track of the number of floors they passed. He began to worry this was some nightmare part of the dream, the never-ending stairway in the dark.

Then he hit a wall.

“That's the door,” Rayna said. “Open it and stay low.”

He crouched, groped for the doorknob, found it and turned. He pushed the door open in slow motion. A layer of small white pebbles covered the flat roof. The façade created a three feet wall around the roof's perimeter. Rayna hit the ground and crawled forward on all fours. Pete followed. At the edge, he raised his head above the makeshift battlement and scanned the city.

Cauquemere's imposing palace covered a full city block two streets away, though it was more than a building. The lit windows of the twin spires seemed to search the city like the eyes of some feral beast. The rear battlements rose slightly higher than the front, as if the building was crouched in position to pounce. The ten-foot iron rail fence wrapped around the palace, but it was a toss-up whether it was to keep intruders out or to keep the predatory looking edifice within contained. The power that pulsed beneath Pete's feet ran hard and fast to the building across the street that practically breathed with life.

The rotting, impaled heads on the sharpened fence points had mouths frozen open is silent warnings. A swarm of Jeeps buzzed in circles around the palace walls and sent un-aimed tracer fire into the surrounding buildings. Though they appeared to lack a disciplined intent to guard the palace, one sight of him or Rayna, and the drivers of the damned would get laser focused. He'd seen that happen. Getting past them to save Estella was going to be a hell of a trick.

“Is it always like that?” Pete asked. “Surrounded by those things?”

“Every time I've seen it,” Rayna said. “It's a non-stop party.”

“How do you stop one of those hunters? Some of them are practically nothing but bones.”

“Eventually,” she said, “they wear out. Skin and cartilage dry out as their energy drains. When there is nothing to hold the bones together, they collapse.”

“Any way to speed that up?” Pete said.

“Maybe. A few residents hijacked a Jeep once. About six of them overran a driver and gunner. They guillotined the driver with a street sign. He stopped moving for good, so maybe a beheading makes a difference.”

Pete sensed a way into the palace. With a Jeep, disguised as hunters…

“Where's that Jeep?” he asked.

“They got about two blocks before a pack of those things descended on them. Cauquemere personally tore them to pieces.”

Pete bit his lower lip. “Then we need a way in there other than driving in the front gate.”

In the distance, a gunner Jeep spun out of control and ran into the palace fence. It burst into flames and the heat began cooking off rounds in the Jeep's magazine. Arcs of random tracers spewed into the air. Zombie hunters cheered and fired their weapons skyward in celebration.

“Shouldn't be a problem at all,” Pete deadpanned.

The pack of Jeeps ground to a sudden halt at the palace entrance. The drivers shook their decaying heads once or twice, as if trying to comprehend something. Then the gunners snapped to. They swung their machine guns until all barrels pointed at Pete and Rayna's observation point. The drivers let loose a fit of group convulsive laughter. All the Jeeps screamed to life. In groups of four, they broke from the gates of the palace, each band headed for a different side of Pete's building. No matter the direction traveled, the gunners kept their sights on the office rooftop. They were well out of range, but that wouldn't last.

“They found us,” Rayna said.

The two ran back into the stairwell. The rooftop door closed behind them and plunged them into darkness. Pete scrambled blindly after Rayna. His feet hit and missed steps. He gripped the banister with both hands to hold his balance, afraid any fall would take them both to the bottom.

They burst back into the office. The distant thunder of the ragged Jeep engines heralded the hunter's arrival. Rayna turned to him.

“Get back home,” Rayna said. “Make us a plan.”

“Come with me,” Pete pleaded. “I have a safe place for you.”

Even in the shadowy light of the ruined office, the incredulous look in Rayna's eyes was unmistakable.

“I can't leave Estella,” she said. “A few minutes with you in Key West is one thing, but I can't leave her here to fight for her future alone. She can't hide from the evil in that castle. Neither should I.”

Pete's heart fell. He'd assumed she felt the same passion he did. Maybe, if he could show her what he had to offer…

He pulled the gold skeleton key from his pocket and pressed it into her hand.

“If you need it, this will guide you to safety,” he said.

Rayna held the key in her open palm. It spun and pointed to the closet door in the back wall.

“Follow where it points,” Pete said. “I'll be there.”

Rayna's fingers closed around the key. She looked ready to protest.

Two machine guns opened up in front of the building and slammed hot lead into the rooftop. Rayna bounded through the remains of a windowsill and into the night. Pete ran into the closet and leapt straight down the earthen shaft. He landed hard on the balls of his feet and dropped to his knees. He sprinted forward and put some space between himself and Twin Moon City. He turned back to the shaft, held both hands out in front of him and snapped them across each other.

The walls of the tunnel turned liquid. The brown mass flowed from both sides and into the center. It solidified into a new wall.

He staggered down the tunnel to the open trap door in the distance. He tried to sort through all the emotions that swirled within him: the panic of having hunters on his heels, the relief of escape, the disappointment of Rayna's reaction to his offer. Could he have mis-read her by such a wide margin? Could everything he felt so strongly be completely one-sided?

He stared up the shaft into the mansion.

He
didn't build that mansion up there all his life for nothing. It was there for the two of them. He knew it. They'd end up there.

All he needed now was one hell of a rescue plan.

Rayna stopped running a dozen buildings later. She ducked into the remains of an upscale coffee shop and collapsed against the wall. She worked to catch her breath and realized she still held the gold key. She opened her hand. It sparkled. The key balanced on her palm and spun one quarter turn to the right.

She whipped her hand out from underneath it like it was on fire. It fell and clattered on the cracked tile surface. It lay there, looking more burnished now against the filthy floor.