Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1) (36 page)

I drew my knees up and put my head down on them, not wanting Jamie to see my face. What the hell was I going to do now?

“Cat,” he said. “I forgive you.”

It took a minute for me to comprehend what he’d said. I opened my mouth to respond but only a sob came out. A long, shuddering sob.

I felt rather than heard him move next to me, and then his arms were around me and he was rocking me back and forth. “Shh-shh, shh-shh. There’s no need for all that wailing.”

“I’m not wailing,” I wailed, and turned my head into his shoulder. “Am not.”

“Of course not. You’re a tough girl who beats up goons and burns down buildings.”

He rocked me and stroked my back and I took it like the tough girl I was. After my shudders subsided, he put me back from him a little. “Better?”

I nodded, and wiped my face on my T-shirt.

“As I was saying, I was furious with you. I understand you had your reasons, and on reflection I could see those reasons. I’m still pissed off at you about something else.”

“What?” God, what now?

He took me by the shoulders and gave me a little shake. “Do. Not. Ever. Throw yourself in front of a madman’s bullet on my account. No matter how guilty you might feel.”

“Okay,” I said. “I hope there won’t be too many madmen pointing guns at us in the future.”

Jamie sighed. “It happens more often than you might think. Anyway, I forgave you for turning yourself in before you tried to commit suicide on my behalf. I love you. How could I hold trying to do the right thing against you? It’s who you are.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “What did you say?”

“I forgive you. No need to belabor the point.” He rolled his eyes.

“No, I mean after that. Did you say you love me?”

He shrugged. “Is that news?”

I gazed at him, slack-jawed.

“I must admit I’ve questioned my own judgment, especially when you’re acting like this,” he drawled, pulling me in to him.

“I know exactly how you feel,” I said, laughing.

“Does that mean you love me too?”

“Idiot,” I said, and cuffed him lightly, enjoying the warmth of him. “Yes.”

“Can I kiss you now, then?”

“Did you bring this blanket for kissing?”

“Not exactly.” There was a twinkle in his dark eye. “Or not just for that.”

“You planned this?” I’d missed how he made me laugh.

“I planned this. And I also planned to ask you to stay with me instead of going back to Seattle.”

“For how long?” I said, still guarded.

He leaned in, and when his lips were a breath away, he murmured, “Forever, I hope. Or however long you’ll put up with me.”

I couldn’t believe what he’d just said. “You said you weren’t made to settle down.”

“I figured we could compromise.”

“Compromise?”

He smiled, his lips irresistible, but I still held out.

“We can get a house with a white picket fence to live in, when we’re not stealing cars and being shot at.”

I laughed out loud, and closed the distance between us.

About the Author

When she’s not writing, Laura Welling wears a lot of other hats: mother, farmer, software engineer. She's Australian but lives in the United States on a horse farm, which she shares with her family, an over-sized dog, and various horses, cats and chickens. She is a compulsive reader of all genre fiction, who started reading before the age of two, and never stopped. She wrote her first “book” when she was five—a spy story, which has since been joined in a bottom drawer by various other early attempts.

This book was inspired by some of her favorite stories: Anne McCaffrey’s science fiction novels, Marvel’s X-Men comics, and
The X-Files
television series.

Dreams don’t come true, but nightmares do.

Tangible

© 2013 Jody Wallace

The DreamWalkers Series, Book 1

When Zeke Garrett is reactivated to mentor the next dreamer that pops up on the Somnium’s radar, he’s sure it’s a mistake. The covert organization is still struggling to conceal the fallout from his last assignment, a fatal catastrophe.

From the first blast of her pepper spray, he realizes this neonati, whose nightmares manifest vampires straight from the pages of pop-culture, is more than he bargained for—a potential dreamwalker. But before her training can begin, he has to convince the stubborn, mouthy woman she’s not dreaming.

Maggie Mackey hasn’t slept well in a month, but that doesn’t explain how the monsters from her nightmares suddenly seem so real. Or why, when a team of intimidating, sword-wielding toughs rescue her, their leader captures her mouth in a swift, knee-weakening kiss.

Once he tears himself away, Zeke’s mental forehead smacking begins. Their embrace has confirmed
they have a rare tangible bond, a phenomenon which fooled him once before. Somehow he must tutor the woman of his dreams without getting attached. Otherwise her nightmares could become his own.

Warning: Contains lots of cussing, pop-culture references and monsters with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Tangible:

Zeke hated it when the dreamers were Joss Whedon fans. Based on the pixel-perfect accuracy of the vampires she’d conjured—vamps who were now attempting to eat her—this dreamer had memorized every incarnation of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
, from the show transcripts to the books to the comics.

Cursing, he flung his knife at an oncoming vamp and whirled to stake a second. The ugly mother snarled its way up the spike before exploding into a million particles of dust. How the hell many were there? The density of the pack wasn’t a good sign.

In fact, it was very, very bad. Especially for him.

The neo they were here to collar huddled in the alley behind him, brandishing a gigantic pocketbook like a flail. Blood from a small wound at her throat trickled down her skin and stained the collar of her coat. He had to hand it to her. She had moxie. And a seriously overactive imagination that had to be harnessed before it got her and everyone else killed.

Well, at least she’d stopped screaming.

“Zeke, five o’clock!” Rhys called. The vamp with the knife sticking out of its shoulder barreled into him, knocked him down and attempted to sink jagged teeth into his neck. His vest and coat protected his torso but not his throat. He grabbed the monster’s head. Yellow goat-like eyes gleamed in the shadows of the buildings that lined the alley.

The rest of the field team was a minute away. His arms trembled with strain and his vision tunneled as he concentrated on keeping himself whole. As many vamps as they’d had the past ten years, they should add gorgets to their field gear.

Not that they could afford it, but it was a nice fantasy.

“Shut your eyes,” commanded a female voice. The dreamer. His dreamer.

“Stay out of this!”

She didn’t. A hand clutching pepper spray appeared between him and his attacker. Desperately, Zeke shoved away the vamp right before a noxious blast hosed its wrinkly mug.

With a howl, the monster convulsed, clawing its head. Zeke rolled the other way fast. Fire bloomed all over his face anyway.

“Excuse me, ma’am!” Rhys thundered up, huge feet kicking snow and gravel every direction, and pounced on the vamp. Zeke heard growls, curses. Over the sound of his own hacking, he detected the telltale
whoomp
of a monster getting dusted.

The dreamer, her voice anxious, blurted out, “Are you okay, sir?”

No thanks to you.
Zeke blinked, coughed and scooped up snow to hold against his face. The icy wetness relieved the burn somewhat. Thank God he’d missed most of the spray or he’d be out of commission. He dabbed his eyes on his jacket sleeve, careful not to smear the residue. With blurred vision, he glanced up to see his target extend her hand to him.

After a long hesitation he accepted, though she’d been more than enough help already. Right before their skin touched, his palm warmed. A whisper of sensation, a magnetic pull, shivered up his arm.

He bit back a curse. A tangible bond—and he’d only been in her head once.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to get saddled with an L2 at most. Screw Sean and his statistics.

The woman tensed, perhaps feeling the faint
zing
, perhaps sensing his hostility. She hauled him to his feet anyway. The process was complicated by the fact his lungs burned, the ground was slick and he couldn’t see straight. Once he was upright, she sidled away, rubbing her hand on her pants.

He copied her gesture, trying to wipe away the sensation of her cold, slender fingers and the potency of their connection. For high-level alucinators, walking someone else’s dreams occasionally forged a spontaneous link that could mean a number of things.

Most were undesirable. None could be addressed in an icy, dark alley with corporeal wraiths on the loose.

“Who were those guys?” Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and she clutched the pepper spray in a defensive position. “They looked like... I’m not crazy, but they looked like vampires. How did you make the bodies disappear?”

He was thankful she didn’t carry a gun. A lot of new dreamers did, their unsettling nightmares driving them to protect themselves from horrors they couldn’t yet name.

Since Zeke was still coughing, Rhys answered for him. “Ma’am, we’ll explain everything as soon as we can, but first we have to take care of stragglers.” And onlookers or witnesses, but so far nobody had come to check out the screams.

“Is this a setup?” The woman confronted them, angry and scared. “Reality TV? I signed no contract, gentlemen, and you will be hearing from my lawyer.”

“Do you see any cameras?” Zeke managed, his breathing normalizing. The deserted alley where she’d been attacked was a long, narrow lane separating rows of historic buildings with tiny back yards. Snow coated most exposed surfaces in a pale gleam of winter.

“You could have concealed them.”

Open concrete carports and trash cans bordered the track, providing lots of places for cameramen...or wraiths. Though lurking wasn’t really the monsters’ style.

“It’s not a setup, ma’am,” Rhys assured her. He clapped Zeke on the back. “Will you live?”

“Yeah. Just caught a whiff.” He flicked on his walkie-talkie, stifling another cough. The device crackled, static-riddled. He smacked it until it worked. What he wouldn’t give for earbuds. “Secure the area. We’ve got the neo. Have Lillian confound any witnesses.”

Though he couldn’t see them from his position, his other teammates would fan out, casing the intersecting streets for more wraiths. The creatures were attracted to the dreamers who’d produced them, but that never stopped them from assaulting passersby. When everyone reported the area complication-free, Zeke coughed one last time and turned to the reason for his current suffering.

Enough light filtered in that he could distinguish the woman’s features and form. Not a kid, thank God. Past her twenties—the most common age for neonati. The cut on her throat looked like a failed bite. It would sting but wasn’t dangerous. Caucasian, US citizen from the accent, with long disheveled hair, dark eyes with circles under them, and a round, cold-reddened face. Five-foot-five or six. She boasted what seemed to be generous curves under her heavy coat and fuzzy pants.

She was on the pretty side of ordinary, with intelligence in her sharp gaze and alertness in her body language.

The problem was she wasn’t even slightly ordinary. She was an alucinator. A person whose mind could access the dreamsphere and drag monsters into the terra firma. Untrained and powerful, she was more dangerous than his whole team combined.

How strong was she? Her initial manifestation and their tangible suggested L4. Not L5—since L5s were extremely rare—but his comfort level extended only to L3, no matter what the vigils and Lillian had insisted.

Someone on his team was going to have to take this dreamer off his hands. He’d mentor the next one.

“Who are you talking to on your radio, your cameramen?” She gestured at the walkie. “Can you prove this isn’t a setup?”

Zeke clipped the walkie to his belt. The old-timers in the organization claimed the first-meet between dreamer and field team had been easier before Candid Camera. Reality television had increased humanity’s disbelief threshold tenfold.

“Vamps turning into dust before your eyes not convincing enough for you?” he asked her.

Predictably, it was not. “Special effects. Projection cameras. How many more fake vampires are there?”

As if they could afford special effects and high tech cameras. “They’re not fake and we don’t know yet.”

“A likely story.” Her words were firm but her big eyes and pale face spoke of a woman who was completely shaken up.

Most dreamers manifested between one and four wraiths at first. Not fifteen. The only way she was getting through this alive was if she cooperated with everything he and his team required.