The Dream Crafter(32)

The man kept his attention on the road, not looking over at her through her struggles. “The Guild wants you bad. Why is that? There’s one thing I know, and that’s the Guild doesn’t give a crap about anyone. This reward isn’t because you’re some poor woman caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Doesn’t happen like that. The only reason they’d pay so much for you is because you are very…special. Want to tell me how?”

“Get lost amidst the four hells.” Amana could spit she was so pissed. First Merc, and now this waste of flesh? She kicked and twisted in a bid for freedom, but so far there was no give, no path to freedom.

“Quit it.” The man reached over, but whatever he intended was thwarted by Amana clamping down on his forearm with her teeth and ripping into the flesh.

“Fucking shit!” He got his arm free, and when he turned to her, his eyes burned with a fever and a light that promised pain. The effort to get himself under control played over his face, but he managed it. “You’re fucking lucky I don’t know why you’re wanted. Enough of this shit. I’d rather knock you unconscious, but I’ll have to settle for putting you to sleep.”

Righteous rage suffused veins and blood, pouring and pulsing through with every heartbeat, each one louder in her ears, and the whisper in seductive tones yes sleep. The little man won’t be so secure after we’re done with him, will he?

Oh gods no

oh gods no

“Please no. No sleep. Don’t put me to sleep.” A red haze still blocked her sight, but fear smacked against it, pushing it away and clearing her body of the deep comfort of anger, leaving the shivers of terror jerking her against all restraints.

“I hope you’re worth all this,” the man muttered, fiddling with the radio dial as he did so. His nails were bitten to the quick, and even with that, dirt somehow still lodged underneath them.

“No sleep. No sleep no sleep no sleep no sleep.” It would happen again. It would happen again. Damn it, damn it, this was the natural end, this is what the Guild had begun.

Panic coursed through her and she threw herself around in the seat with every muscle bunching against the restraints. Please please please, and even as the begging words filled her brain, a heaviness swamped her body and mind, pushing consciousness down and closing her eyelids against all effort otherwise.

Her body might be asleep in the front seat, her head lolling to the side and toward the passenger window, but Amana’s consciousness was aware, strong in her dreamscape, sitting in the battered and lumpy backseat. In front, her captor was still driving, glancing over at the sleeping form of Amana next to him. Blood moved in a slow trickle down his arm from where she had torn into him. At the next red light he stopped and flexed his arm, cursing and giving her dark looks.

She passed through his consciousness, and oh, that’s what he was. A wizard and a trickster, his magic all about illusion and escape. Powerful in that, powerful enough to have freed her, but overall he would not be someone most magic users would worry over. He was deception and misdirection, not direct combat.

“We could end him.” Sitting next to Amana in the backseat was her devil dressed in her skin, from the long near-black hair to the thin top lip, to the petite body and gentle curves. The double’s gaze was locked on her, and here was the only difference between the two. Her devil had a disconcerting teal-blue gaze, the color of the ocean as darkness sets in, and all of death on display in its depths. “You fight too much. You could have so much more. Why be scared of such a waste of flesh as that?”

Even in the dream Amana’s pulse drummed in her ears, and she didn’t answer, focused completely on her sleeping form. She wouldn’t acknowledge, not even for a moment. Acknowledging meant giving it power and position in her life.

The other Amana didn’t press. She sat forward and flicked at the man’s ears, hitting him with light taps. The man shook his head, waved his hand as if to wave a fly away. “Little mosquito. I should swat him harder.”

“No.”

Her devil looked triumphant at the break, her smug smile settling into the unlined face. “Thought you weren’t interested in talking?”

“He’s driving the car. Even you’re not that stupid to want our body destroyed.”

“You call me stupid? Really? You condescend to me?” The voice was disgusted amusement, and the twisted look that followed that never belonged on Amana’s features. “Why would I want you to exist as you are? What are you? A groveling mongrel, always with its belly to the ground and pathetic in its gratitude for any scrap thrown its way. Nakoa deserves better.” And the other Amana punched through the seat in front of her, and in the dream her fist passed through the fabric and went straight through the man’s throat.