Chapter Seventeen
Oops. Wrong body. “Look, I know this is gonna sound nuts, but it’s me. It’s Cain.”
He pulled the Twizzler from his glass with his teeth and started gnawing away. Between bites, he said, “Ah, okay. Well, at least you’re not wearing the bunny suit this time.” He shuddered, glancing away from Devin, and tipped back his glass to down the remainder. When he looked back at us, he burped, sending an array of neon colored bubbles into the air before turning and making his way back down the hall. “That was creepy, man.”
“Wait!” Devin and I followed him. He pushed through a large white door and into a sprawling living room. Donna was there—or, his mental representation of her—sitting on the couch in a slinky black dress. Next to her were several fish bowls, a large black dog, and a white cat wearing a tiny tuxedo and black top hat.
“Dude,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not sure I wanna know what you’re doing in here with her—and all those animals.”
He turned back to us, surprised. “Whoa. You’re still here? I gotta stop eating olive loaf before bedtime.”
“It’s not bedtime.” I shivered as the cat in the tuxedo turned and winked at me. “You were knocked out. Think. You came into your office. Cain was there with another guy. He stuck you with a needle.”
Wentz laughed me off at first and sank into the couch, putting his arm around Donna. After a moment, his expression changed. He turned to Devin, eyebrows forming a deep “V.” “You came to my office…”
“Yes,” she said. “I was there, too.”
Unnerved, Wentz pulled his arm away from Donna and a moment later, she, and all the animals, disappeared. Glancing up at me, he said, “And who’re you again?”
“Remember what you told me about your research? The woman who healed you? The abnormality in the chromosomes? Those people—they’re called Sixes.” I took a deep breath and thumped my chest. “I’m one. I’m a Six.”
Wentz seemed to consider this for a moment before nodding slowly. He was taking this all really well. Inclining his head toward the door, he said, “Well, then who’s he?”
Devin stumbled back and hauled Wentz off the couch as Henley, wearing a smug grin, sauntered in. Crap. I’d been afraid of that!
Wentz made a grab for the fish umbrella, but I pushed both he and Devin forward, herding them toward the door on the other side of the large room. “Gogogo!”
“You brought Henley with you, too? Why would you do that?” she yelled, fumbling with the knob.
“Not on purpose,” I huffed.
Once through the door, everything changed. Instead of a living room—or even a room—we were outside. Tall trees loomed high into the sky—the normal kind—blotting out the light, and a dense forest stretched in front of us as far as I could see. Instead of the carnival-on-crack setting we’d just come from, this one was dark and ominous. Kind of like something you’d see in the real Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The one where the evil witch chomped Hansel and Gretel to bits.
I almost tripped over a fallen tree trunk. “Wentz—what the hell, man?”
“Awesome, right? The woods behind my parent’s summer house. I love coming here.”
I righted myself and pointed to a large patch of brush a few yards away. “Hide there. I’ll see if I can stall him.”
Devin grabbed my arm. “Hide? Why hide? You said you could change things, right? Can’t you, like, poof us somewhere?” She gave me a hopeful, but scared smile. “To Mt. Fuji?”
“Unfortunately the transportation system is down at the moment,” I breathed. She had no idea I’d been shot and I saw no reason to bring it up. The last thing we needed was someone panicking. “Now go. Hide!”
I waited till Wentz and Devin were tucked safely away before stepping back out onto the path. My timing was perfect—Henley was just rounding the far corner. “So, Cain is it?”
Obviously he’d heard what I’d said to Wentz. I shrugged it off and grinned. “Neat trick, eh?”
“So you can hop in and out of people’s dreams? And change your appearance? And push people? Well, shit… Fess up. Are you Supremacy, too?”
“Is that jealousy I hear?”
Henley grinned. “Not really. More like gratitude.”
I folded my arms in an attempt to hide the fact that tremors of cold raced up and down my spine. I didn’t know how much longer I had. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
He took a step forward, teeth bared. “You’re making this crazy easy.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re going to clean this whole mess up for me. You came in, disgruntled because Wentz fired you, and offed him. Then, out of guilt, offed yourself. No fuss, no muss.”
He dove forward, but I avoided him, stumbling back as I focused hard on the landscape. Everything grew watery, and I could feel my strength seeping away, but a moment later, the ground beneath my feet trembled slightly and a wall appeared between Henley and me, brick by brick. I couldn’t transplant us all to a different local, but thankfully I could still manage the minor stuff.
For the moment, anyway.
“Move,” I called to Devin and Wentz, hoping the wall held long enough for us to put some distance between us. I could feel it. There wasn’t much time before Cain’s body failed. I wasn’t in pain, a faint ache maybe, but I was drained and the cold was getting worse. Like I was sitting bare-assed on top of an iceberg.
“He can’t hurt us, right?” Devin said once we’d made it through the woods. About thirty feet away was a small log cabin. Faint tufts of smoke rose from the chimney, and the same annoying cat with the tuxedo and top hat sat on the porch.
“I don’t know,” I said. Turning to Wentz, I asked, “What is this place?” And as a side note, I added, “And what the hell is up with the creepy cat?”
He stared at me like he’d never seen me before—but to be fair, he technically hadn’t. Not like this. “The cat’s not creepy at all. And the cabin is my grandparents’.” He shook his head. “This is all real? You’re really one of them? Invading my dream?”
I wished people would stop using that word. It was so…intrusive! “I didn’t invade anything, man. I’m trying to help.” I pushed him toward the house. “Can we debate this inside please? Away from the homicidal freak?”
Once behind locked doors—not that I thought that would stop Henley—there was a minute to take a breath. I slid down the wall and settled on the floor next to the front door, hugging my arms tight to my body. It didn’t help the chill. Devin paced the length of the room while Wentz sank into the chair across from me.
“You have to wake up,” I said. It was becoming an effort to keep my eyes open now, and the chill was starting to take on an achy quality. I was sure if I closed my eyes I’d slip from the dream. The good part was it would probably take Devin and Henley with me.
The bad part was Henley hadn’t had nearly as much of the injection as Wentz. Pulling Devin and Henley from the dream wouldn’t save them on the outside and it didn’t mean they’d wake up. Henley could wake long before they did and with me injured, there was little I could do on my own to help them. I needed Wentz to wake up first.
In the chair, Wentz took a deep breath. “So we’re all sleeping, then? You guys broke into Dromere to take a nap?” His lip hitched. “That’s ridiculous. The lounge chairs aren’t that comfy.”
I rolled my eyes. “I overheard Henley being ordered to come to Dromere. I followed him. Devin followed me and when she tried to interfere, Henley knocked her out. You were right on her heels and the minute you walked into the office, Henley injected you with something. Boom. You were out.”
Devin stopped pacing and shot me a suspicious glare. “Hang on. What about Henley? And you? If Mr. Wentz and I were knocked out by Henley, how did you two get here?”
“I got to Henley before he pumped everything in the needle into Wentz. I gave him the rest and he went down—but he won’t be down long, which is why—”
Devin held her hand up. “That explains Henley. What about you? You didn’t just pull up a couch and drift off into dream land. You said you can only dream dive when you’re asleep.”
“I hit my head,” I lied. “Passed out as Henley went down. I think that’s why I’m having so much trouble manipulating the dream. Injury.”
This seemed to placate her, but not Wentz. “Go back a second,” he said. “What do you mean, you heard this Henley guy told to come to Dromere? Why?”
“He’s here to kill you, Wentz. Kill you and steal the formula for Dromin12.”
He stood from the couch and pinned me with a suspicious glare. “Steal the formula? Why?”
“He’s one of them. A Six. You had it wrong. They don’t want to stop your research—they want to use it. These people did something bad—genetic research that went horribly wrong. They wanna give it another go and think your formula might hold the key to success, so they sent spies to get it from you. When that failed, they sent in Henley.”
Wentz’s eyes narrowed. “Spies? You mean you.”
The accusation and anger I saw in his eyes made me flinch. “Yes and no. It’s not like that. The genetic manipulation—an experiment to try and mess with Sixes abilities—went bad. Really bad. Someone I care about is in a lot of trouble and I needed to find a cure. I was spying on them to find it. But then I found out about your research…”
His eyes narrowed. It was the first time I’d ever seen true anger in his eyes. “So you we’re going to try and steal it? Is that it?”
“Of course not. After you told me what you were doing, I knew I couldn’t let them anywhere near it. I was at Dromere under the guise of helping them when I was really trying to keep them away from it. They want it to create an army of badasses. I need it to save someone I love.” Using the wall, I got to my feet. “Right now it doesn’t matter. You both need to wake up before Henley does or this conversation is moot. We’re all dead.”
Wentz didn’t trust me anymore. I could see it in his eyes. But he was a smart guy. He recognized that this was bigger than the lie I’d told. “And how are we supposed to do that?”
I turned to Devin. “Focus on opening your eyes. We talked about this. You can control your dreams. If you want to wake up, you can wake up.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. After a moment I could see the panic setting in. “I can’t. Maybe I hit my head too hard. Maybe I’m—”
“No,” I snapped. “You’re fine.” I turned to Wentz. “Focus. You can force your body to wake up.”
“You said I was drugged. How am I supposed to push past that?”
He was right. The drugs would make things harder, but not impossible. “Keep trying.”
I brushed the filmy curtains aside in time to see Henley approaching the cabin. He’d broken through the wall and had an axe in his hand. Closing my eyes, I pictured a moat. Murky water. Impossibly wide. Full of snapping crocodiles.
All that appeared was a thin, shallow stream Henley was able to step across without breaking a sweat. “Shit. We need to go.”
“I don’t understand,” Devin said. “All those things you did in my dream—you can’t do them here?”
“What things?” Wentz said, peering around me to look outside. “What things is she talking about?”
“Normally I can—can change the landscape of the dream. Alter the details.”
“Well then go for it. Alter that a*shole out of my head. Or maybe stick us some place safe. Someplace with burgers—I’m starved.”
A little of the Wentz I knew. That was a good sign.
“I can’t make any major changes—I tried.”
“Why?”
I sighed. There was no point in not coming clean. “Because I’m currently bleeding to death on the floor of your office.”