The Dream Walker (21 page)

Chapter
48

When Nico woke up, he could see the confinements of his room. Apparently, his eyes were glowing.

He tried to roll over, but the pain ripped through his side. He didn’t have time to think about that now—he’d made contact with Alaina, and he hoped she understood that what they had shared was real, that his feelings for her were real. Now, he had to see if George or Daniel were asleep. If either of them were, Nico was going to get as much information about this fuck-all mess as he could.

Rolling over, he put himself back into trance. He didn
’t detect any dreamscapes throughout the warehouse. Opening his eyes, he counted to three thousand, and then tried again.

Well, hello, George.

Welcome to your nightmare.

George
’s dreamscape was pretty much what Nico would have guessed—nothing but black that stretched for miles, representing death, hate, and malice. George kneeled on the floor over something, and Nico didn’t wait to find out what it was.

“
Hey, George,” Nico said.

George spun around and looked up at him. Nico could now see that George was hunched over Alaina
’s bloody body with a knife. He’d killed her, signifying he was losing his self-control.

“
What are you doing here?” George asked.

“
Just here to talk.”

“
I don’t have anything to say to you.”

Nico nodded. “Actually, I just have one question.
”

George stared at him, wiping the bloody knife on his pant leg.

“Do you see the ash, George?” Nico figured first and foremost he had to know exactly what George was. Psychopathic human or Colonist offspring?

“
Of course I do. All of us who follow Daniel see the ash. He’s showing us our true nature.”

“
And what’s that?” Nico asked.

“
To kill!” George said, lunging at Nico.

Nico dodged him, and George came back, his blade looking for a home inside Nico’s stomach. Grabbing George
’s arm, Nico used his momentum to spin George around and pull his arm back behind him. Then he jammed it upward until George screamed. The knife fell to the ground, and Nico bent over to grab it, never letting his grip on George waver.

George let out one last scream as Nico lifted the knife. A second before he slammed it into George
’s chest, the dreamscape started to spin, and a moment later, George was gone.

Nico opened his eyes. That rat bastard had woken up.

Nothing would have happened to George if Nico had gotten the chance to bury the knife. Nico just wanted to stab George for his own satisfaction.

Fifteen minutes later, the door opened, and Nico winced from the light. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out George
’s features and hear his heavy breathin
g
.

“
Get up,” George said.

Nico did as he was tol
d
.

George studied him for a moment.
“Daniel said there would be some weird shit happening here when the sun went down. Turn around.”

Nico did, and he felt the cool steel cuffs clamp around his wrists, and then heard the click of the lock.

Wonderful.

“
Come with me.”

Nico did as he was told, keeping an eye on George’s gun. Once he was out of the doorway, he stopped and waited for directions. He took a few deep breaths and got ready to spring when the time was right.

“Head to the right,” George said. Nico watched where he was stepping, the concrete cold on his bare feet.

“
Have you considered why my eyes are glowing?” Nico asked, curious about how much George had been told.

“
Yeah. Daniel says you’re from outer space, and we were going to make millions by turning you into the government, but plans have changed.”

“
Daniel changed the plans?” Nico asked. He was getting the feeling that Daniel wasn’t the one in charge. Making millions by turning in an alien to the government? Yeah, that was a perfect, slimy, demented fit for a Colonist. The fact that the plan had been abandoned was telling. Someone else was ultimately in charge—Nico didn’t have concrete evidence, just a gut feeling.

“
No. No one changed the plans.”

Nico stopped. Someone had turned this ride south, and he was determined to figure out exactly who that was.
“So you changed the plans?”

“
It’s none of your fucking business who changed what plans,” George said, and he gave Nico a push. “Now, keep moving.”

Nico thought about it for a moment.
“Well, if Daniel isn’t in charge, and you aren’t in charge, that means someone else is. Now, from what I gather, Daniel was kind of over you, so that would make you the lower man on the totem pole, right?” Nico didn’t wait for an answer to his question. “That sucks, Georgy-boy. I’ve been the one on the ground floor before, and it’s never pretty to look at all the asses above you.”

“
I’m not the low man. Daniel was my mentor, but now he’s my equal.”

Nico rolled his eyes.
“If that’s what you think, man. Daniel’s sure got you snowed.”

George said nothing as they continued to walk.
“So who’s calling the shots around here, George?” Nico taunted. “I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

George stopped walking and looked around as if he were confused.
“Some asshole named Micah.”

Chapter
49

Nico tried like hell not to let his surprise show and hoped he was successful.

“Keep walking,” George said.

Okay. Time to put the pieces of this fuck-all mess together.

Micah had approached the Saviors about working together because they were finding mutilated animals. He had speculated it was the work of a Colonist.

What if Micah had approached said Colonist, namely Danie
l,
and asked to work with him? Both had the same motive: they wanted to get rid of the Saviors. Nico shook his head. It was the perfect bluff to get what Micah had wanted the whole time: to get rid of the Saviors.

Okay, so Daniel found a whole bunch of Colonist offspring and encouraged them to embrace their true natures: to kill. The Saviors played right into Micah
’s hand and agreed to work together to hunt the Colonist. The Saviors probably would have been gunned down on patrol, except Noah had insisted that the Saviors and The Platoon be split up into deuces, not travel in packs. Micah couldn’t say no because that would raise a red flag. Without knowing it, Noah had saved all their lives by making that decision, which screwed up Micah’s plans.

George must have become completely fixated with Alaina and convinced Daniel that she needed to die because of what she had learned at the meeting: George had killed his first person. Alaina had been another crimp in their plan. As the offspring of a Colonist, Daniel must have just assumed that she would be happy to kill at random.

They staked out her apartment and work, and when they realized that he was hanging around a lot, they had another piece of bait for the Saviors—namely, Nico.

Nico looked over his shoulder at George. Man, George was being played harder than an Aerosmith guitar. After all was said and done and the dust had cleared, George was nothing but a pawn that neither Daniel nor Micah would have any use for. George was as good as dead.

Yep, the pieces were fitting together and everything was making sense now. There was just one thing Nico didn’t understand: the Alain
a-
Daniel angle. What was Alaina to him? Yes, she was part Colonist, but Daniel had no idea of what she would do or whether she would help him.

That was the missing card.

He rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks. George giggled in an eerie, high-pitched way that was really annoying on the eardrums, and very disturbing to the psyche.

When Nico looked ahead, he clenched his fists. Alaina was huddled in the corner by a stack of pallets, her hair covering her face. She was so still, Nico wondered for a moment if she were dead.

Thankfully, when they entered the area, she looked up, her eyes glistening with tear
s.
She must have been hit in the head and stunned because she wasn’t restrained in any way. Maybe George knocked her out before putting her against the pallets, or maybe he threw her so hard she was too dazed to move.

But no one made his female cry, or hurt her. Nico
’s SR44 male roared, and since George seemed to be the only one around, Nico set his sights on destroying him.

However, he couldn
’t let the cauldron of “I’m-going-to-fuck-something-up” show. He had to play this cool. “So, what’s your plans with her?” he asked.

“
I’m going to gut her.” George was actually frothing at the mout
h.
“I’m tired of taking orders from others. It’s supposed to be me and Daniel, not Daniel and Micah. I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do since I laid eyes on her the first time.”

Nico strained against the handcuffs, trying not to let his stress show.

“And I want to do it in front of an audience, and that’s you,” George said, as if he were doing Nico a favor by allowing him to watch the slaughter. Nico met his gaze; on a scale of one to ten, he was dealing with crazy at about a twenty.

“
I like people watching me do my work,” George said. “Daniel used to watch, but he doesn’t anymore. He says he’s too busy.”

George
’s hand began to twitch as he stared up at the ceiling. “It’ll be Daniel and I again soon.” Then he nodded his head as if he were trying to convince himself. “He’ll understand why I’m doing this.”

No one with a rational mind would understand what George was doing, but Daniel the Colonist? Yeah, he
’d probably understand.

Nico glanced over at Alaina, who was desperately trying to catch his eye. Nico looked down at his chest. He hoped like hell that Alaina remembered his tattoo of the closed eye from her dream. She stared at his chest, then a small smile tugged at her lips. Meeting his gaze for a brief moment, Nico saw the fire in her eyes, and he knew his girl still had fight left.

“Say good-bye to the whore,” George said in a sing-song voice, as he went over to a tripod and mounted the camera. “I’m going to video this for Danie
l.
He doesn’t want her dead, but once he sees what I do to her, he’ll appreciate it.”

Yeah, shit was going to get nuts in a few seconds.

“I thought you weren’t in charge, George,” Nico said. “I thought you needed to follow orders around here.”

“
I don’t give a fuck!” he screamed as he began to pace and talk to himself.

Nico glanced over at Alaina and mouthed the word,
“Go.”

“
Daniel ruined everything that we had! I’m going to fix it so that it’s just us again!” George screeched.

George was really getting the SR44 male within Nico riled up, and he was twitching to do some damage. He also wondered if there was some sort of homosexual thing going on between George and Daniel, because George seemed to be really focused on this
“togetherness” with George.

Although he wanted to do serious damage to George, Nico wasn
’t at one hundred percent. He winced as the stab wound burned, but he had to keep George occupied so Alaina would get the chance to slip away.

“
So what’s the deal, George?” Nico asked. “What’s going to happen here?”

“
I already told you. I’m going to kill her, and you’re going to watch,” George said.

Nico laughed, although his chest constricted.
“I seriously doubt that.”

When George took a few steps forward, Nico head-butted him in the face. George screamed as blood gushed from his nose. The room started to spin again, and Nico desperately tried to figure out which of the two Georges in front of him was the real on
e.
Two fists were coming at him, flailing around inches from his face. Nico moved to the right, hoping to dodge them. No luck. A direct hit.

Damn, he should have moved left.

Nico took a step back, hoping his dizziness would clear soon or he was going to be sunk. When the Georges turned back around, they both held a gun. Nico closed his eyes from a brief moment and shook his head. The dizziness must have been from the amount of blood he’d lost earlier.

“
If you want to play it that way . . .”George sai
d.
The trigger was pulled, the bullet lodging in Nico’s upper thigh. “I’m not going to kill you yet. I need my audience. My audience is important.”

Pain ripped through Nico
’s leg as warm blood flowed down his calf. Despite his best efforts, his body crumpled to the ground. He watched helplessly as George headed toward Alaina. When he glanced over at where she should have been, she was gone.