Dream Killers - Complete Season 1 (The Dream Killers Book 3) Read online

He turned his attention back to his book. “You haven’t met Dreamland then.”

  I rolled my eyes and pulled the book I chose at random off the shelf. I stumbled with the weight of it. It was heavier than I’d imagined. Was it made of lead?

  I found a spot on the sandy floor to sit. The desks were all much taller than me and attempting to climb one of them with the book was a silly idea. I narrowed my eyes. I could use Place to get from—

  But that didn’t make sense because there was no reason for me to use a desk for the sake of being at a desk. I’d be just fine where I was. I settled against the vertical support post, and rested the book on the ground, supporting the opened cover with my knee.

  The pages were blank.

  What was the point of a book with no pages?

  “Think of the question you want answered.”

  I frowned at Wadji.

  “Each book has a wealth of information from different eras and periods of not only Dreamland’s histories, but of the surrounding dimensions and universes. There’s too much information to put into words you would comprehend onto a single page. Think your question, and if there is information in that book to answer you, it will appear.”

  Huh. Google in book-form. I blinked at the page. Okay. “Tell me why someone would be destroying dreamplanes to get to dreamers.”

  The page did absolutely nothing for a long moment.

  Then, a stream of information flowed upward. A dark energy formed to one side of the book, light piercing it. The light grew brighter and brighter until the darkness had been obliterated. The light receded and inside it stood a girl. Her name was Rose.

  With her name came a wealth of other information. Her favorite toy was a stuffed ocelfare—which looked remarkably like a bear—and she never wore anything other than her pajamas because she’d been born with three bad hearts. She couldn’t stand or walk. She didn’t play with other kids. She listened to them play in the compartments beside her own.

  She wasn’t from Earth—at least not the one I knew with Google and Obamacare. She wasn’t a part of that earth’s histories, either. She had four arms. Her hands had three fingers and a long thumb. Her tail swished behind her, making her long nightgown shift. Her hair was green and her skin was blue.

  I leaned closer.

  She’d come up with the idea of living in her mind, of creating a place where no one could tell her she was too weak to play. She gathered her imagination and the energy from the things around her to create Dreamland.

  She created Dreamland? A dreamer. An alien dreamer, but still.

  The information stream went blank.

  “Wadji, what do you know of how Dreamland was born?”

  He shook his head absently, his eyes trailing a stream of information rising like a fog. “Nothing. Why?”

  “I think I figured out why someone’s after dreamers.”

  He frowned over his glasses. “There is no way you found it that easy.”

  “Unless Dreamland wanted me to find it?”

  He gestured with one hand for me to bring him the book.

  I grabbed hold of it and called on Place. I’d never teleported anything other myself and the clothes I wore. I wasn’t sure it would work.

  But I had a much greater understanding of how Dreamland went together now. I felt how the desk was tied to the sand that was touched by the sea that was connected to all of Dreamland. Weight and possessions didn’t matter. Location didn’t either. I simply had to step from one location to the next as if the two points had been drawn together to create a shortcut.

  He blinked in surprise as I appeared on the table next to his book. My book appeared on top of his.

  I looked at the book and re-asked my question. The same stream of information flowed up from the blank pages.

  Wadji frowned at me. “I don’t understand why you thought that was important.”

  “What?” I blinked. The video hadn’t even finished playing yet. “Give it a minute.”

  “There is nothing to see, River.”

  I stared at the stream. “You’re not getting this?”

  He narrowed his lightning-filled eyes. “What do you see?”

  “The first dreamer. What about you?”

  He pulled back and frowned at the book, crossing his arms over his chest. “I saw darkness.”

  “I don’t—” Books should be pages filled with words. I didn’t understand these. “Are you not supposed to know about the dreamer?”

  “And why are you allowed to see it?”

  “That’s a good question, too.” But it gave me something to worry about. Was there something about Wadji that Dreamland didn’t trust?

  He took in a deep breath and shook his head. “Perhaps you saw it because you asked the question with your heart.”

  Whatever. I was going to show a little caution around the dragon man just in case. “We just have to figure out what it means.”

  “What did you see?”

  I shrugged. “A little girl who couldn’t walk or play. Her body was a trap. So she created a place she could play in her mind.”

  “What details were you able to glean from it?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t look human, for one. Humanoid? Yes. Human? No. She had four arms and a tail. And she lived in compartments, not apartments or houses.”

  Wadji’s eyes were distant. “There are many dimensions to Earth, but there are many other worlds as well.”

  “Does Dreamland touch all of them?”

  “Do you know why we are able to travel by Place?”

  I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips.

  “Because we live in a fold of time and space—so neither are important and are always relative. We breathe in a moment that is past, present, and future. It is only limited by what we are able to perceive.”

  “That makes absolutely no sense at all.” And did all at the same time.

  He thumped the pages of my book. “If this data was an answer to your question, I would offer that the elders are searching for the dreamer that can shape Dreamland the way they want it.”

  “Or—” I held up a finger, waiting for the thought to fully form in my mind. “Or they’re searching for the dreamer to kill her.”

  “Why? That doesn’t even make sense.”

  Oh, but it did. “Maybe the elders don’t want to die.”

  “It is the way it has always been.”

  “You haven’t lived up there, Wadji. You haven’t been hunted by them. Whatever their purpose was before, things have changed. They’re greedy bastards with too much power and no one to stop them.”

  “That can’t—”

  “There you are, dream killer.”

  I spun on the desk. Candi floated above my head. Her tentacles billowed and flicked to keep her elevated. “I’m not a dream killer.”

  She shoved her face into mine, her bright pink hair flaring around me. “Then give me the net.”

  “If you help me get the dreamer out, then I will.”

  Candi’s sapphire eyes shifted as she stared into one eye and then the other. “The only way for a dream to leave the net is for it to die.”

  That wasn’t possible.

  “You helped trap that dream in the net. Now you will help it die.”

  “No.”

  Her tentacles twitched as she shot to the side, searching me. “Where is it?”

  I took a step back. “What are you planning do with it?”

  She advanced. “I plan on destroying the net so it can never be used to murder anyone else ever again.”

  “You’re going to kill Bess?”

  “She is a sacrifice that must be made in order to protect the rest of the dreams.”

  “Are you even listening to your—”

  Her flattened nose touched mine. “I will end you, dream killer. No matter the cost.”

  “CANDILANDRA, YOU are being overzealous.”

  Not the word I would have used.

  She bowed her head in his direction. �
��Wadji-saun, I did not see you.”

  How could she miss a big, hulking dragon?

  Wadji let out a pent-up breath. “You cannot hurt him. He is a man of dreams.”

  She turned a startled stare in my direction, the iridescent scales along her forehead twinkling. “He is a dream killer.”

  “You are thinking too much like your mother. Perhaps, you should rectify that situation. Use your own mind.”

  She clenched and unclenched her left hand. “What do you wish of me?”

  Wadji raised himself from his crouched position behind the table and towered over the warrior. “He has taken me to the graveyard.”

  She flicked her gaze in my direction. “The graveyard?”

  “The broken dreamplanes.”

  Her eyes blinked vertically so fast I barely saw it. “He did?”

  Wadji nodded. “He will be a valuable ally.”

  Me. Huh. Oof. The dragon man’s expectations might have been a little high.

  His eyebrows twitched and his lightning-lit gaze flicked toward me before he returned his concentration on the warrior. “Show him the cavern you protect. Then, he will understand.”

  “I don’t want his understanding, Wadji-saun. I want to destroy that net and all those like it.”

  “Do you ever wonder why Dreamland created them?”

  “I only wonder why Dreamlanders did so.”

  He took a few steps back, the sand rising into the water. “Think with your mind, Candilandra, and take him to your cavern. That is what I wish you to do.”

  She glared at him for a long moment, then lashed her tentacle around my wrist.

  “Claws,” I said, flinching. I didn’t want to wind up bleeding again. The woman was built to kill.

  Her bright pink lips quirked. “Retracted.”

  And they were, though I hadn’t realized squid had the ability to retract their claws. Well, perhaps they couldn’t. How was I supposed to know? But she could and that’s what was important.

  She dragged me through the sea with great speed. The guardian’s city appeared in the distance, but she didn’t head in that direction. She took us to the outskirts, where the city was barely visible.

  She stopped at a rock outcropping and let me go. Her tentacles fell to the sand, and she inched along the sea floor. She peered down a chimney of sorts. “Are you ready for this, dream killer?”

  I hadn’t come all this way to stand around.

  “Follow me.” She pushed herself into the chimney. The last of her tentacles disappeared like a retreating eel.

  I looked down.

  All I saw was shadow.

  Awesome. What lay ahead? Was it a trap?

  I took in a deep breath. I couldn’t see down the hole, so I couldn’t teleport. I kept my arms in front of me and pulled myself along the porous walls, hoping it didn’t get too tight. When was the alga going to show up to light the way?

  No phosphorescence lit the walls of the rocks down there, but my eyes did finally adjust. Shapes grew in the darkness—shadows among shadows.

  Then, I found myself in a room.

  I dragged myself out of the tight tunnel and crawled along the rock floor. It was like a hoarder’s house. Boxes sat stacked atop one another at dangerous angles along the cavern walls. Piles of cloth and jewels and other baubles were thrown about.

  “You finally made it, I see.”

  Candi sat on a wooden cart at the far edge of the cavern, staring down at something in her clawed hands.

  I walked toward her, wiping my palms on my pants.

  She raised her face, her eyelids blinking sideways again. “Are you really a man of dreams? Like Wadji?”

  I shrugged. “That’s the current theory.”

  She looked down at the thing in her hands.

  “What is this place?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I took a hesitant step closer. When she didn’t move to attack, I took another and another until I stood next to her, my hand hovering over my empty sheath. I wished I knew where my knife was. I could really use it.

  She shifted, her hair settling along her spiked shoulders. She held a shoe. A green sneaker, to be exact. The laces were darkened with dirt, the heel splitting away from the rest of it.

  “What is that?”

  She raised her large-pupiled gaze to mine. “Touch it. If you really are a man of dreams like Wadji says you are, then you will see.”

  A frown flicked across my face and I reached out.

  Electricity shot up my arm. My back arched. My eyes closed. Every muscle in my body spasmed.

  The man whose dream had fed the motor of the riverboat danced before my mind’s eye, his body contorting in slow motion as if he were dancing in sludge. Bliss filled his expression as he pushed his body through the motions.

  Hope should have filled me. I knew that. It’s what powered the rest of the sea, accompanying all the dreams.

  All I felt was a heavy sorrow that made my limbs feel like lead. This dream was dead. This man would never dance like this again, would never know this joy. I recalled how he’d died, surrounded by numbers and dollar signs and decimal points, lacking any emotion, any artistic expression.

  I fell to the rock floor, my body relaxing, the spasms subsiding.

  Candi watched, her chin raised.

  I closed my eyes, careful not to touch anything else. I knew what this place was. It was where all the dead dreams went. Another graveyard. How many would I discover that day?

  She set the shoe on a pile of junk.

  I sat up and rubbed the back of my neck. “Did you—” I gestured to the rest of the room.

  She flicked to a floating position and the room opened, widened, grew longer. More dead dreams became visible, layer after layer of them. “Yes.”

  I stood and swallowed.

  What will my dream look like when it dies? Bess asked.

  I glanced down at my belt, then away, licking my lips. Candi didn’t seem to hear my dreamer. That was good. That meant she would have no way to find the net. You’ll never find out, I said. I swear it.

  “I know you’re not the dream killer, River, but you know who is.”

  I did.

  “I’ve been tracking them since I became a guardian, but I can’t find them. I haven’t discovered how they move, where they stay. There are many of them.”

  “Nets or people?”

  “Both. Why would anyone kill dreams like this, River? What kind of monsters are they?”

  “They’re not—” I dug my nails into my scalp. “They think they’re abandoned dreams. They think they’re just recycling what’s been discarded.”

  “There is no such thing as a discarded dream.”

  “A forgotten one, then.”

  She shook her head, her lips tight.

  “Are you trying to tell me that every single dream in this sea—” Which was so much bigger than I’d ever imagined. “—is alive, hasn’t been forgotten? I read these dreams, Candi. Humans forget dreams all the time.”

  She turned on me, her black claws inches from my face. “The dream itself can reshape, find new direction. The dream is hope itself, and that never dies.”

  I flinched.

  She pushed away, her free hand clenching and unclenching. “I will allow you to go. Find your dream killers. Tell them that the dreams are real, and that they are not forgotten. Tell them to stop killing.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Where was the trap? I could feel it had to be there. Somewhere. I was pretty sure.

  She whirled on me, shoving her face in mine, baring her shark-like teeth. “If you do not succeed, I will kill them.”

  She’d already admitted she couldn’t follow them, so how—

  She reached out with her spiked tentacle and touched my face. “I have your Who.”

  Crap.

  I NEEDED TO KEEP Candi from killing Bo, but moreover, I needed to figure out if there were dreamers stranded in the graveyard.

  The best way to get to the dreampla
nes was with Night’s Cruelty. I had a theory on why the sea didn’t touch the one dreamplane Wadji and I had visited. It had been completely dead, drained. The sea had nothing to feed.

  The others had at least some twinkling of light, which meant, there was at least little life left in them.

  Besides, I wanted Bo with me. I wanted his support. I just hoped he’d forgive me.

  Licking my lips, I gave Candi one last glare and then reached for Bo’s Who.

  Place was so much more than a location out in the sea. Night’s Cruelty didn’t sail on top of it. She sailed within it. She was in several different locations in space and time in the same moment. Trying to pinpoint her location following Bo’s scent was like trying to fly in a hurricane with nothing more than a set of wings.

  Candi’s lair disappeared. Water took its place. I floated in the middle of nowhere. I had no sense of Where, no bearings at all.

  I felt someone’s touch on my mind, like they were trying to finding me.

  Candi. I’d never had my Who tracked before.

  I closed off my mind as much as I could, and used my arms to bring me toward the beams of light shooting through the rolling ocean above me.

  The hull of a boat sliced through the water, passing directly overhead. Could it be that I’d actually been able to track down Night’s Cruelty? I could hope.

  I pushed myself to the surface as the ship passed by. She wasn’t moving quickly, which meant Bo didn’t have a wind. That worked perfectly for me. I needed on that ship.

  I reached for Place, the feel of the deck beneath my feet, but was unable to grasp it. Why didn’t it work? I could see it. The ship was right there.

  Maybe this was the reason Candi couldn’t track Bo. The ship somehow protected him.

  Shouts reached me. Men leaned over the rail.

  This wasn’t exactly the entrance I’d hoped to make.

  A rope was thrown to me and I latched onto it. I climbed the hull of the ship as they pulled me up. Holding onto a rope at a vertical angle was not as easy as I’d hoped. I dragged myself over the rail and put my hands on my knees, allowing my arms a chance to get out of their jelly state.

  Booted footsteps thudded toward me with purpose.

  I could do this. I could save Bo. I could protect him. We could team together and save the dreamplanes. I took in a deep breath and straightened.