Dreamwalkers (12 page)

I’m not far off. No one is having sex (thank
GOD), but I’m right next to a dark-haired man watching two women
wearing collars and little else mud wrestling.

“Ugh,” I say aloud, wanting to continue with
a snarky comment about run-of-the-mill fantasies for stupid
guys–only I notice that the man beside me, the dreamer, has noticed
me.

I’m sure there must be some way for me to
dream-disappear, and I try to make that happen while he eye-rapes
me.

Upon opening my eyes, I see that I am still
in the dream. And he is still looking at me.

I sigh.

“Look, buddy,” I say. “This is all just a
dream. Trust me, no woman in her right mind is going to willingly
wrestle naked in shit for your viewing pleasure.”

“They will and they do,” he says.

The man has a smug look that I want to punch
right off his face.

“Oh, and they willingly pluck your nose hairs
and shave your back too, I bet?”

“You will be a fun one to break, little
girl.”

“Again: this is a dream.”

He leers at me from beneath his fantastically
bushy eyebrows. “Dreams can become nightmares.” He smiles and shows
that he is missing two teeth.

“So, does Geo know what’s going on here?”

The man steps back.

“What do you know about Geo, little
girl?”

“I know you work for him.”

“Hah!” The man sneers at me. “No one works
for Geo.”

“No?” I arch an eyebrow. When it doesn’t seem
like the man will give me any more information, and his eyes slide
back toward the wrestling women, I decide I will have to get his
attention the only way he will give it.

This is when I notice what I’m wearing for
the first time. My own clothes, thank GOD. I half-expected to be
naked or something. Or wearing just a collar.

I clear my throat and jut out one hip,
looking at the man over my shoulder. “Reeeally?” I purr. “No one
works for Geo?” My lower lip pouts. “But I thought he was the top
dog, so to speak. You know.” I creep closer to the guy than I would
ever have in real life and stroke his bicep with my finger. I
whisper in his ear. “The Alpha.”

I definitely have his attention now.

“Oh, yes. Geo is the Alpha.”

Aaaand his eyes are not up here.

“I only mean that we do not get paid to do
Geo’s bidding. He commands us. He owns us.”

“And where is Geo now? Does Geo own these
women?”

“You talk too much,” the man says, and pushes
his mouth toward mine.

I duck away in a decisively non-alluring
manner. “Whoa, buddy, you move fast,” I say, trying to recover.
“Um, I mean, I don’t even know your name.”

“Ben,” he says, and goes for it again.

“And I take it you don’t care to know my
name, then.” I try to step back out of his sudden embrace, but he’s
holding on tight.

“No.”

I feel myself begin to panic at the clamp of
his hands on my arms. “Sexy,” I mutter. “How about letting me go? I
think your two lady friends over there are feeling neglected.”

In fact they had frozen like a movie on
pause.

“Who are you?” he growls.

I close myself and imagine my body turning
into smoke, and miraculously it works. I drift up and away from the
fetid stench, dissolving out of his grasp, and channel my energy
back to the safe hotel room and the nice safe bed waiting for
me.

Heart pounding, I sit bolt upright in my bed.
To my surprise, Remy is awake and watches me with concern in the
pool of light from the bedside lamp.

“What did you see?”

I take a deep breath to stop my heart from
racing. “I found a man named Ben. He was… there were two women
wrestling. He said Geo owned them. Him, and maybe the women too.” I
shuddered thinking about his aggressive manner. “I’m sorry. It was
weird talking to him. He seemed suspicious of me as soon as I asked
about Geo.”

Remy reaches up and pushes some hair out of
my face. “It’s a start,” he says.

“I guess I’ve never tried to direct my
dreamwalking before. Not without actually knowing the person whose
head I’m entering.”

“Are you ready to try again?”

I look at him, wondering if I should say the
other part of my dream. Then my mouth starts talking before I can
overthink it.

“I found Daniel,” I say. “He was at my house.
Overlooking my house. As a wolf. He… he was watching it all
burn.”

Saying it now, hearing the words out loud
even from my own mouth, that makes them true. “They burned down my
house,” I repeat.

“You found Daniel.” Remy sits back and looks
at me. “Just now. In your dream.”

I open my mouth, close it. He knows I was
lying before. I’m sure the guilt is written all over my face.

“I couldn’t tell my mom,” I blurt out. “I
couldn’t tell Aunt Jenny. Do you understand? I found him and then
lost him again. I didn’t want to be a failure. It was better to
pretend I hadn’t found him at all.”

Remy gets up and walks over to the map. His
silence only makes me talk more.

“I used to dreamwalk with him all the time.
He was really messed up, you don’t even know. He didn’t know he was
a wolf. He thought he was some kind of psycho killer or something,
he was, like, suicidal. I had to go around as a wolf almost the
whole time because he was that screwed up. So I’d go into his
dreams and tell him that he needed to go home.”

Still Remy doesn’t speak.

“He tried to kill himself. It was totally
fucked up. My mom and Aunt Jenny wanted me to find him because they
thought he was gonna be this great fucking leader and he’s trying
to fucking hang himself, okay? And finally I had convinced him that
he needed to come home, and basically taught him that he’s a
werewolf, and we’re trekking home through a snowstorm and one night
I wake up and he’s gone. Totally gone. I couldn’t track him.”

That’s it. I swing my legs out of bed and
approach Remy’s back. “He didn’t want to be a leader, okay? How am
I supposed to explain all that to my mom? Or
his
mom?”

“Just like that,” Remy says quietly.

I don’t know what to say now.

“This is important information, Kayla.” He
turns, his hand resting on the map. “Daniel is out there, and you
have a lifeline to him. You can connect to him through his dreams.
You should have told us. Or me, at least.”

“I’m telling you now.”

He shakes his head. “And you lied about the
mate bond too.”

“I didn’t… I just…”

He turns back to the map.

“Here’s your house. Presuming your dream was
true, that means Daniel is here.” His finger rests on Wolf Point.
“Are you sure that what you saw was happening in the real world? It
wasn’t just some symbolic thing? Maybe Daniel was thinking about
burning his ties to his family.”

“Daniel’s dreams were never… dreamlike. He
always dreamt about being exactly where he was. I feel like… I feel
like it was real.”

“But you’re not completely sure.”

I have a hard time meeting Remy’s gaze. I
want so badly to somehow redeem myself in his eyes. “Ninety-nine
percent sure.”

“Okay.”

He returns to the map.

“I didn’t lie about the mate bond,” I say. “I
don’t know if it worked or not. I felt a connection to Daniel but I
think it was only because we grew up together. Because I couldn’t
have made a bond with you if I was mated to him, could I?”

“You seem to think I know all the rules.”

All of a sudden I feel my age. I’m fifteen
and that’s young. And Remy might be in his twenties and that’s
young too. I’ve been looking at him like an adult or a leader, and
he doesn’t have all the answers.

“Geo must have sent a crew out to start the
fire. They are probably still in that area. Now Daniel is in that
area. If Geo’s crew gets wind of Daniel, they’ll go after him.”

“We have to help him.”

“From what I know about Daniel, he can take
care of himself,” Remy says.

That rubs me the wrong way. “Didn’t you hear
what I told you? He’s suicidal. We need to help him.”

“Daniel took on three grown wolves on his
own. Daniel survived on his own for three years before you came
along. And somehow he made it back here on his own. That tells me
he can take care of himself.”

“I watched him try to hang himself,” I manage
to say through a lump that has suddenly risen in my throat.

“He’s a survivor, Kayla. He might have had a
moment of weakness, but he made it here on his own, and I have an
idea of how he can help us.”

I wait. And blink back unshed tears.

“Geo’s men will go after him. They’ll be
tracking him. If we can keep track of where he is and where they
are, we might be able to get Daniel to lead them into an
ambush.”

Remy and I are both tired the next morning.
We sleep in until eleven, then drive around until we find a little
restaurant that’s still serving breakfast. Dot’s Diner has a
sticky, worn quality that makes it feel familiar and welcoming.
While I scarf down a stack of pancakes, Remy buys a newspaper and
leafs through the pages. He doesn’t seem to be reading any of
it.

My sleep, after we finally settled back into
bed, was dreamless. Remy had wanted me to try dreamwalking again,
but I think my brain was too exhausted.

I watch Remy flipping through the paper. He
never even really asked me about Ben or the wrestling women. Maybe
I didn’t make it clear enough how disgusting the scene was and how
threatened I felt. I’ve never felt like that during a dreamwalk.
I’m usually in control. I didn’t like that man Ben touching me and
trying to kiss me like he owned me.

“You cold?”

Remy is looking at me.

I shrug. “Just remembering my dreams.” Did
that sound as nonchalant as I wanted? I drag a piece of pancake
through maple syrup and pop it into my mouth.

“I’m sure Daniel will be okay,” he says.

“I wasn’t thinking about that part of my
dream.”

He raises his eyebrows.

I swallow. “Daniel will be okay. You’re
right; he’s a survivor.”

“The other part of your dream,” Remy
prompts.

I look at my pancakes. “It made me really
uncomfortable. I felt like he was threatening me.” I squirm in my
seat. “He had these two women, and they were, like, naked.” My
voice drops as I look around me to make sure no one would be
listening in. “It was gross.”

“Was it a sex dream?”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. It made me
feel a little better. “Maybe. Yeah, maybe it was just a sex
dream.”

“I’m sure it’s hard to tell what’s really
happening and what’s in someone’s imagination,” Remy says.

“I guess… I got this vibe off of him. Like he
enjoyed hurting people. Or like he could do whatever he wanted to
women in general because they’re weak, or something.”

Remy puts his hand over mine. Until that
moment I hadn’t realized I was using my fork to shred my napkin
into pieces. “I know there are men like that out there. But you are
strong, and I’m not like that, and I will do my best to make sure
Geo doesn’t hurt you, and none of his men hurt. This Ben will not
hurt you. I will protect you.”

His eyes are penetrating and I want to
believe his words, but at the same time I know he can’t go with me
into my dreams and can’t protect me there.

I also know he wasn’t there to protect my
mother from Geo and his men.

And another part of me doesn’t want him to
protect me. I want to be strong enough to protect myself. I want to
kill Ben and Geo and the one named Matthew.

The next night is fruitless. I pop in on
Daniel’s travels, get a sense that he is heading south.

toward me

It might be my fear of stumbling across Ben’s
dreams again that keeps me from finding them. Back at Dot’s Diner,
Remy buys another paper. I’m feeling restless and not hungry. I
want to get out and do something instead of sitting around waiting
for night to fall.

“I think I’ll go for a run or something
later,” I tell Remy.

He glances up at me, then out at the urban
area outside, with barely a tree in sight.

I drop my voice. “As a human.”

He goes back to the paper.

I wish I had brought my iPod or a magazine. I
settle back and people watch the line of truckers eating their
lunches at the counter, the reedy boy mopping the floors. He gives
me a quirk of a smile like he’s too shy to do much else. I figure
it’d be busier on a weekend morning, so he must be out of high
school.

I’m on my third coffee refill when Remy says,
“Here’s something.”

“What?”

“A wild dog attack, in Glasgow. That’s one
town over from Wolf Point.”

“That close?” Goosebumps prickle along my
arms.

“I have an idea,” he says. He turns the paper
around so I can see. “This is a picture of the man who was
attacked. Do you think that will help you find him? Maybe the
victims won’t be as suspicious as Geo’s own men.”

I stare at the face of the man in the photo.
It looks almost like a yearbook photo but he’s far too old to be in
school. Oh wait–it says in the caption that the man, Martin Baker,
is a fifth-grade teacher. Okay.

“I could try.”

Remy smiles. “Good.”

When we return to the hotel room, I change
into some sweats and throw my hair up into a ponytail. “So, I’m
going for a run,” I say.

Remy doesn’t look up from the mess of
newspaper clippings and maps. “Let me just get changed.”

“No, I can go by myself.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Your mother is trusting me to keep you safe.
I will go with you.”

I sigh. “So now you’re my bodyguard.”