The Sandman (11 page)

Jordan’s stomach turned. She understood the rationale behind memory retrieval—a couple of notable cases had been won, serial killers taken out of circulation—but the idea still made her uneasy. She now concluded that the practice was absolutely and utterly unethical, and she would happily sign any petition or wave a sign in order to end it.

She wished she knew what Chimera would do with Malcolm. Wished they’d at least let her know if he’d awakened. Had he even survived the black market’s fall? Or had the nightmares gotten to him? At the thought, she swayed off-balance while walking, and the Chimera gripped her tighter.

Once through the big door, the officers dragged her toward a room labeled Retrieval Preparation. There, the senator left them to go speak with another official-looking man, who shook the senator’s hand and leaned in to say something to her. She laughed like a politician, measured and short.

One of the Chimera officers hit another square wall button, and the door to the prep room opened. A male nurse waited inside next to some kind of chair contraption that reminded Jordan of those weird backward seats with face rests used by massage therapists in malls.

“Please take a seat,” the nurse said.

“No, thanks.” At least she could resist. Resist like hell.

“If we have to force compliance, your memory may be damaged.”

“Yep. So I’ve been told.”

One of the officers stepped up to her side and caught her gaze with his. “You don’t want to resist,” he told her.

Yeah, she was pretty sure she did.

Jordan’s belly was weak, but she straddled the chair and put her face into the donut. Never, ever again would she look at a mall massage chair the same way. This was total bullshit.

The nurse strapped her in place—across her thighs, back, upper arms, and wrists—so that she couldn’t do anything but waggle her hands and feet. Something was fitted around the back of her head. Her breath went ragged, sweat dripping down her neck and between her breasts.

“Please don’t struggle,” the nurse said. “I have to get the IV in for your sedation.”

What?
“This is
not
legal.”

“You’ve been identified as ‘At Risk.’”

A Chimera officer came around and held her forearm firmly against the chair’s armrest. Tears burned down Jordan’s cheeks as the needle found a vein.

“You have no idea what you’re doing!” Jordan shook the seat with her struggles, couldn’t help herself now. “The nightmares are just going to get worse. The Oneiros are helping them. The black market fell. The Agora will be next!”

But no one was listening to her.

The nurse lifted a syringe and took off the lid protecting the needle, then put it into the IV tubing.

“Please!” Jordan cried. “Don’t do this!”

A wave of warmth seeped through her, followed by a soft and swift decline in her strength. As darkness billowed up around her mind, she heard the guards talking.

“Did you see the news about that freak tornado outside DC?”

“It’s still going, man. They’re evacua—”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sera. Shot.
Every nerve of Harlen’s body had recoiled in pain so that he was simultaneously in agony and numb to the world. He dimly understood that he was being roughly handled, though he couldn’t see anything with the hood over his face. His hands were still bound at his back, and rage spun like dust devils within him, dry and cutting like the Scrape.

“How can you call yourself Chimera?” Rook, who was ahead of him, said to their captors. “You took an
oath
.”

Had Sera been scared? Like lightning, terror lit him, stealing his breath. Had she been in pain? His chest seared for a moment, making him stagger.
Sera. Shot.

She’d promised to marry him, and goddammit, he was going to hold her to that promise. Or whoever was responsible—the senator, for starters, and the Oneiros, too—would understand what vengeance looked like. This wasn’t Harlen’s first war.

Ahead, he heard a soft
clack
, the sound of metal knocking, and a metallic squeak. “Watch the step,” Rook’s guard said.

Harlen followed Rook up two stairs and into the back of a Chimera prisoner-transport truck. The balls on these people. Using Chimera vehicles for Oneiros dirty business. Acting out in the open, as if they had no concern whatsoever about discovery and prosecution. Committing murder.

His body flashed with pain again, stealing his breath.
Sera.

Rook could drown people who’d been Darkside, but they had to wait for the right moment. Harlen sat on a bench along the left interior of the truck. Rook was silent beside him, probably lost in his own thoughts about Jordan and what she was enduring.

Worry was warranted. Harlen had seen memory retrievals gone wrong, the confusion and disorientation that subjects experienced following a bad procedure, all in the name of justice. With his proxying expertise, he was no stranger to brutal Rêve practices. Now they even sedated individuals so that they would have no ready defenses to fight.

Someone else climbed in the back of the transport truck. Smelled feminine.

“What’s taking so long?” The woman had an older tone to her voice that Harlen recognized. Senator Fleight.

“They just put her under,” a male voice responded. “Will be a few more minutes.”

Rook surged in his seat, but his bonds wouldn’t allow him to rise. Yeah, it had to be Jordan they were talking about.

“I guarantee you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” Harlen said.

“Be quiet,” she said.

Harlen wouldn’t let up. Not ever. “Kidnapping. Reveler oppression. Murder.”

“I’m breaking many laws,” Senator Fleight said, “but you’ve got a couple wrong. I haven’t killed anyone. Yet.”

Hope formed a sudden, painful gorge in Harlen’s throat. “Sera?”

“Act devastated if anyone else asks, but she’ll pull through, thank God,” the senator said. “She got out of surgery. I’m told your father has all the nurses in line.”

Harlen shuddered. “My father’s there?” Could he dare believe the senator?

“In return for Jordan Lane’s cooperation, yes.” The senator sighed hugely. “Unfortunately, Jordan reneged on our agreement.”

Rook’s breathing got heavy at the mention of Jordan.

Jordan had given herself up to help Sera? Harlen was astounded and grateful beyond anything he could express.

“Do the retrieval on
me
,” Harlen offered. It’s the best he could do for Jordan. “I’ll comply. Just let Jordan go.”

“Too late for heroics, I’m afraid,” the senator said.

“She’s not going to let you take her memories,” Rook said, pride evident in his words. “She won’t let you know where Vince and Mirren are.”

“No, she won’t,” said Senator Fleight. “She’s been very consistent in her refusal, thereby making this whole thing take longer, even if we are skipping the procedure itself.”

Skipping the procedure?
Harlen let out a strangled gasp of relief. If the senator was playing with them…

“Are you doing the memory retrieval on her or not?” Rook demanded.

“Not. Just have to make it look like we are, and then she, along with you two, are supposed to be transferred to the Oneiros.”

That didn’t make sense, either. “You’re not Oneiros, though.”

“Nor am I a killer, but they almost made me into one. If you both can wait until Jordan gets here, I’d rather explain everything just once when we are safely on the road.”

Harlen wanted the hoods off their heads. Wanted to see for himself if the senator was sincere. Sera had pulled through. It made his eyes tear. And Jordan was not going through memory retrieval, just the fright of her life. Harlen was going to send her and Rook on vacation if they managed to live through this. He would be forever grateful.

“Is Jordan okay?” Seemed Rook was struggling, too.

“I don’t know,” the senator said. “She was okay when she left her cell. I don’t like this delay.”

“And my mother?” Harlen asked.

“I have no plan for her,” the senator said. “She’s in holding, still Darkside last I checked.”

Ma was still in there. “You have to get her out.”

“This was the best I could do. Quiet now,” the senator said. “Jordan’s coming.”

Harlen heard soft footfalls, then a shambling clamber into the back of the transport.

“Where’z goin’?” Jordan asked, obviously drugged.

“The nurse will sound an alarm when he finds her missing,” Osbourne said as the back doors to the transport slammed shut.

Harlen nodded his head. He
hadn’t
been wrong about Osbourne when he’d picked him for the Darkside Division. The man was coming through in spades, even if it had meant pretending to be Oneiros to his own supervisor.

“You staying or getting the hell out of dodge with us?” Senator Flight asked.

“I need you here,” Harlen said to Osbourne.

“I guess I’m staying.” Osbourne pulled the hood off Harlen’s head, and then he went for Rook’s. “Sorry about this, by the way. When I said everything was FUBAR, I wasn’t kidding.”

Harlen blinked and took in the transport’s occupants. Jordan lay sideways on the bench across from him, lids low. With a jerk, the transport was in motion.

Rook lifted his cuffed hands. “Get these off me.”

Osbourne freed him first, then handed the keys to him so that he could unfasten Jordan’s.

Harlen looked over at the senator. “So now you’re on the side of the angels?”

She lifted a brow. “Are you an angel?”

He really wasn’t in the mood.

The senator sighed at his scowl, her expression likewise going serious. “I’m not with the Oneiros,” she explained, “and I hate what happened to Sera and that I was party to it.”

“So you’re giving up on Blackman and Lambert?” Harlen didn’t believe it, not after all the shit the senator had pulled.

“I have a request,” she said.

Rook was whispering to Jordan. Harlen would give just about anything to be doing the same with Sera. Soon.

“You want to make a deal?” he asked, incredulous. “Now?”

“A request,” the senator said. “I want to meet Vince Blackman and Mirren Lambert.”

The woman just wouldn’t give up. “No.”

She opened her hands as if to placate him. “It can be anywhere and any time you choose. Even Darkside, where I know they could easily overpower me. I just have to know how Agatha died. What her last moments were like. If she was in much pain. But I will no longer leverage the Oneiros or my position to find them. A young woman almost died because of it.”

He hated that he could relate. Hadn’t he been imagining Sera’s “last” moments?

Jordan was trying to speak. “Noah…”

Rook leaned his head in to listen, whispering back.

“I’m getting you away from the trouble I put you in,” the senator continued to Harlen. “If you can help me, I’d appreciate it.”

“It can’t be soon,” Harlen said. And
never
if Sera worsened rather than recovered.

“Whenever. I’ll be ready.” She looked down for a moment and then met his gaze fully. “My deepest apologies. Agatha was not innocent—my fault, too… She met Lambert through me—but I understand from your father that Serafina is.”

Rook had looked over, his hand tightly clasped around Jordan’s. But Harlen didn’t know what to say in response to Senator Fleight’s apology. He wasn’t ready to accept it. Not nearly. Maybe in ten years. Or a hundred.

“Where are you taking us?” he asked instead.

“You tell me,” she answered. “Or don’t. I can drop you somewhere, anywhere you like. What do you need? I’ll make it happen.”

Harlen wished they were in the dreamwaters so he could feel if she were telling the truth. This turnabout was too sudden. Too convenient. A godsend. But then again, was this even a turnabout, at all? Senator Fleight had been anti-Oneiros for years.

Well, time would tell.

“One of our friends has been expecting assistance,” Harlen said. But he wasn’t leaving the area without Sera, and he had a feeling she was in no condition to be moved.

“Yeah, but we might have a bigger problem in the Agora,” Rook put in. “Jordan’s a little dopey right now, but she says there’s
another
hybrid by the name of Noah Aldric, lead singer of a band called Revelations.”

“Yes, she’s been relentless about this Noah,” Senator Fleight said.

If Jordan was relentless, she had reason.

“He and his band have been flagged, pending an investigation,” Osbourne said. “They aren’t going back inside the Agora anytime soon.”

Osbourne hadn’t seen the carnage following the fall of the black market. The Agora was next, whether Noah led the attack or not.

“We split up,” Harlen said. That way, if the senator were playing them, they’d have a better chance of escape. “I’ll stay here for Sera and to get my mom out of holding. I’ll take the Agora, as well.”

“Oneiros are everywhere within Chimera,” Rook said. “Going back there is walking into certain death.”

Harlen disregarded the risk. “Rook, you take Jordan and go for…our friend.”

“If your friend is Marshal Steve Coll—” the senator shot Harlen a wry smile; she seemed to know everything “—and you need to get to the DC Care Center, then there may be no point. The weather there has made the area inaccessible.”

“Tornado,” Jordan said, slurring.

Rook chuckled and kissed Jordan on her forehead.

“Yes,” the senator said. “Well, no one knows what it is. Tornadoes dissipate. This thing is growing. The governor has issued an evacuation. That reveler care center—and I know this because I’ve been following Lambert’s status—has been destroyed. I have a bottle of Cristal Rosé I was going to open upon his official passing.”

Harlen looked at Rook and found his own dismay reflected in his friend’s expression.

“What?” asked the senator and Osbourne simultaneously.

“The Sandman is rising,” Harlen murmured. Steve had warned them, and now it seemed it was too late.

Rook scratched his head, his brow furrowed. “On the other hand,
Jordan and I
could stay here and take care of Sera. Break your ma out of Chimera. And while we’re at it, we might as well take on the nightmares that are sure to attack the Agora. And the asshole Noah, if he shows up.” He finished with a big, toothy smile. “You go get Steve.”