Hit List(15)

“I can smell you, Anita. I can smell all that sweet skin.”

I started moving in the black maze, away from his voice. I thought about needing a weapon. I thought about my Browning BDM and it was in my hand. This was a dream. I could change some of it—normally I could break free of dreams, but something about the ones with Haven seemed to trap me. I think guilt made me stay to see the horrors.

I started moving faster, taking left turns only. All mazes had the same premise: One direction would lead out and one would lead to the center of the maze. I don’t know why I chose left; why not? I just prayed that it led out and not deeper into the blackness. But it was a nightmare, and you never really win in nightmares. No, they’re all about losing over and over again.

The center of the maze was a huge square space with a fountain in the middle of it. The fountain was all black squares and quietly pulsing water; as the center of a scary night-dark maze it wasn’t bad. It could have been worse; and then, of course, worse stepped out of an opening on the other side. Worse was six feet and a little more of slender, muscled handsome. Haven’s hair was still short, gelled into spikes on top of his head, all of it done in shades of blue as if some artful hairdresser had pretended that blue could be a real hair color and have highlights. The hair made his pale blue eyes look more blue than they actually were, I think; it was hard to tell since the hair was always so close to his eyes. The hair and the Sesame Street tattoos on his shoulders were what had made me nickname him “Cookie Monster.”

“What do you want, Haven?”

“What I always wanted: you,” he said.

“You can’t have me.”

“Here I can. Here there’s just me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Let’s.”

“You’re dead. You’re dead. I killed you.”

“I remember.”

“You’re dead, you don’t remember. You’re just my guilt visiting every night.”

“Am I?” he asked, and something about the way he said it made me ask, “What else could you be?”

Other figures stepped from the entrances around the square. Figures in white masks and black cloaks: Harlequin. I raised the gun and pointed it vaguely; there were too many of them, and I wasn’t that fast, not even in dreams.

Movement made me glance at Haven; he was wearing a black cloak and held a white mask in his hand. “We’re coming,” he said, “wake up.”

I woke staring at the dark ceiling, pulse thudding, throat almost closed around it, and then I heard it. The door, not the knob, but the brush of someone against it, like the first tentative touch. I drew my gun from underneath the pillow and tried to think how to warn Laila without them hearing me. They were either vampires or wereanimals; they’d hear any whisper. Then I realized they’d heard the change in my heartbeat; they knew I was awake.

I had time to say, “Laila, they’re here!” The door opened as she sat up in bed but didn’t reach for a weapon. Shit. There was no one in the doorway. It stretched pale and empty, filled with night and the artificial lights of the parking lot beyond. Then I heard it, a creak of board, and knew something was crawling on the floor, hidden from me by Laila’s bed.

She had her gun in her hand now, and whispered, “What is it? Why is the door open?”

I started to say, “It’s by you, on the floor,” but one minute she was on the bed with her gun and the next a black shape whirled over her and she was gone. I’d seen the speed of lycanthropes and vampires, but all I saw was the cloak like a black sheet and it dragged her over on the other side of the bed with it. It wasn’t just fast, it was as if the thing, whatever it was, was formed of the blackness of the cloth and nothing more. Fuck, that couldn’t be real. Had it mind-fucked me? If the answer was yes, I was about to lose in real life and not just in nightmare.

“Yell for help and we kill her,” a voice said on the other side of the bed. It was male and growly; I was betting shapeshifter of some kind.

“How do I know she’s still alive?”

“Do you think I could kill her that quickly?” the voice asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He laughed. “Say something, girl.”

There was a moment of silence, then a small pain sound, and Laila said, “I’m alive.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“No.”

“Oh, I’m sad that you think I haven’t hurt you yet. The next thing I do to you, you won’t doubt that you’re hurt.”

“Leave her alone.”

“We will if you give us what we want.”

“What do you want?” I asked. I had the gun pointed in the direction of the voice, but there was nothing to shoot at. If I was patient maybe there would be; nothing is faster than a bullet.