Read Darksider: Reveler Series 3 Online
Authors: Erin Kellison
Chuck’s eyebrows went way up. “Where have you seen others like her?”
He hadn’t answered the question, so the lady was probably in charge.
“I was Chimera,” Rook said. “I’ve bumped into her kind once or twice in the past.” Actually, he’d only seen one in his personal experience, Steve Coll. He’d heard about Lambert from Coll and Maisie. “She’s a walking nightmare.”
“Careful,” Chuck said.
“Why should I be careful? The Scrape is full of monsters like her.”
Rook had to know what kind of person he was dealing with, and he wouldn’t find anything out by ingratiating himself.
“I need you to do a job,” Chuck said.
“Have her do it.”
“Please, Rook, don’t make this messy. I don’t like mess.”
The threat. Rook had known it was coming. If it had just been Chuck—and hell, even some of his better revelers—Rook could’ve drowned him in the waters, collected Jordan, and been well on their way before Chuck made it back to the waking world.
He hadn’t anticipated another freak.
Three
of them. What was the world coming to?
There’d be no Chinese food tonight. No Jordan taking his temperature. Just that old life, reaching out from behind him to drag him back in.
Rook looked beyond the light to the blond lady’s face. He could just make out a small mole on her cheek. She was young, dressed in leather, but with a bare midriff. Red scraggly lines on her skin peeked out of her pants. Stretch marks? “What makes you think I’d do anything for you?”
“You don’t have a choice,” she answered, her words drawn out like a lullaby.
Darkness rushed him as if the waking world was made of dreamwater, too. Instinctively, he attempted to surge upward to gulp for air, but his reach wasn’t long enough, not nearly, and a whirlpool sucked him down and around, whipping him senseless like a rag doll.
***
Dizzy?
Yeah, right.
Jordan knew Malcolm was hiding something from her. She just wasn’t the type to demand answers—or worse, whine—when he clearly wanted privacy. Either she trusted him or she didn’t. So she was going with it.
With a brown paper bag full of hot Chinese food under her arm, Jordan turned the corner down the dark street where she and Malcolm were staying for the time being. No idea how long or even whose place it was. Malcolm had some contacts who were obliged to help him, past favors coming due, future favors promised, that kind of thing. Made her nervous for him, as if he were taking loans out on his soul. They needed to find their own way and soon.
The creepy street grew quiet as she walked away from Tenth Ave, where restaurants of every ethnicity lined the street. She passed redbrick buildings with green awnings, an industrial row with only fire escapes, and a graffiti-tagged garage. The New York street could’ve been found in her sister Maisie’s dream city, a place they called Maze City—pitch-black pools of energy mixing with an ominous pall, a combo that put Jordan on guard.
So when a man stepped out of the shadows and grabbed her arm, she was ready. The Chinese food dropped to the pavement, and leveraging his weight, she kneed him in the balls.
He folded like a chair, gasping. “I’m trying to help you.”
She knew his voice. “Vince?”
Vince Blackman had once tried to hand her over to Didier Lambert’s organization. She’d drowned him for it—though he had no idea that in so doing, she’d sent him into the great dust storm beyond the dreamscapes. He’d met with the nightmare creatures there, but he’d survived.
“You can’t go back,” Vince said. “They took him.”
“What do you mean they took him?” The hunger that had pulled her out the door to pick up dinner now added an edge to her mood. “No one knows where we are.”
Wait…
“How did
you
find us?”
Inside, her heart was breaking. She hadn’t wanted this to end so soon. Why so soon?
“I found
you
, Jordan.” Vince was attempting to drag her back down the street the other way, but she wasn’t having it. “I didn’t even have to look. I was pulled right here. We have a connection.”
Connection. Ridiculous. They’d been found.
Malcolm had taught her how to use darksight, to see revelers among those in the waking world. But when she forced her vision down the street—let the darkness and the dim ambient light blur together—she couldn’t make out a damn thing that would tell her where Malcolm was or who’d taken him. She should’ve been able to see Malcolm from here. Why couldn’t she see him?
Somewhere on the walk back from the restaurant her dream had shattered.
“You can’t go back there,” Vince said. “He’s been taken. They came ten minutes ago, and if you go any farther, they’ll have you, too.”
“Why should I believe you?” She didn’t want to believe him. She wanted to sink back into the heat and pleasure of Malcolm’s arms. She should’ve never left without him. Her first instinct was to hurry back and see for herself with her regular sight. But she couldn’t. If Vince had found her, then the place
had
been compromised. She should turn and run. It was the smart thing to do, but she didn’t want to be smart. She was wailing inside.
“Because I’m sorry I tried to hurt you,” Vince said. “I lost my father because of it.”
She didn’t know whether to knee him again or pity him. His father was dead because of his involvement with Didier Lambert.
Vince was supposed to be in a hospital on the other side of the country. Or that’s where she thought he’d been yesterday. He looked hospital-worthy, gaunt and pale, his once-handsome features sharp.
“Jordan, you have no reason to believe me,” he said, “but I swear to you, Rook was taken. Don’t go back there now. Come with me. I’ll help you.”
But follow
Vince
?
He’d been an agent of Didier Lambert’s. He probably still was, regardless of what had happened to his father. The coincidence of him showing up at the same time as Malcolm being “taken” was just too much.
She backed down the street a couple of steps, taking a deep, steeling breath. No going home. Honeymoon over. The best thing to do was to go Darkside and tell Steve Coll. Then work out a plan with him to find Malcolm. She hadn’t been a fan of Steve and his inhuman aspects, but she was more than willing to ask him for help now. Steve was great. She was all about Steve now.
Turning her back on the place she and Malcolm had shared for the past few days, she picked up her pace to head back toward light and noise. Long strides charged her blood as she thought through what she’d need to do.
A hand at her back told her that Vince was matching her pace. Lose him? Or use him?
Think.
She had to assume he was working for
them
, a thought that made her slow for a second as she turned it over in her mind. In a way, she was just as caught as Malcolm, but the powers that be were just playing her differently. Therefore, she could do nothing that would lead Chimera or Lambert to Steve and Maisie. She had find an
indirect
way to contact Steve. How the hell was she supposed to do that? She didn’t even know where they were in the waking world.
“We’ll go right to Chimera,” Vince said. “They have a huge branch here. I know some people.”
Chimera. Ha.
So that’s whom Vince was working for. Chimera was corrupt.
She came to a decision: Lose him.
Then run.
It’s what Malcolm had drilled into her.
Never stay too long in the same place.
Three days was now officially too long. They’d made a mistake somewhere.
Turning back onto Tenth Ave, she considered how difficult it would be to get away from Vince. She could drown him where he stood, and then she could cut inside the deli and right back out the rear exit. Would cops and Chimera appear and tase her? What if she screamed for help and used the ensuing commotion to make her escape?
Vince kept talking, but she wasn’t fully listening. “When they hear one of their own has been kidnapped…”
Panic tightened her lungs. Made her head buzz.
“Jordan!” She was jerked backward out of the street as a bus rushed by, inches from where she’d been about to step. Vince had his arm around her waist.
Jordan fought the hold he had on her, wrenched out of his grasp, and pushed him away. “Don’t you touch me!”
He staggered back, held his arms in the air, then looking a little peaked, he bent over, hands to knees. “You weren’t watching where you were going.”
He probably had instructions to take her alive. Chimera and Lambert would want Maisie’s waking world location—she who could do things Darkside that none of them could even dream of. If Maze City was an outrageous show of talent already, what would Maisie be able to do in the years to come? There was no way Jordan would lead him to her sister. “Don’t do me any favors.”
Vince’s face screwed up as if she were crazy. He was going gray, wheezing. His lips were turning kinda blue. Maybe Chimera should’ve given him an extra day in the hospital before sending him after her. Served them right. Him, too.
“Jordan. God, I’m…not…” He was gasping now, going down on his knees.
Passersby slowed, but Jordan waved them on. “He just needs a little space to catch his breath.” They kept walking, and Jordan surveyed the street around her.
But there was no sign of Chimera.
Vince collapsed the rest of the way onto the pavement, his stubbly cheek connecting with a pink piece of petrified and well-stomped chewing gum. His eyelids were still partially open, the whites showing.
“I’ve already called an ambulance,” she said to another interested stranger. “He’s going to be okay.”
And he would be, eventually. This was simple reveler exhaustion. He’d been in the dreamwaters for at least five full days. The body doesn’t like it, weakens, as if it’d been weightless in space for too long.
’Night ’night.
And she hadn’t even needed to drown him. Took all of ten seconds.
When he was out cold, she left him. She checked for traffic at the curb—no deadly busses now—and crossed, leaving Vince behind her. She found a cloud of pedestrians a couple blocks over, moved with them, stayed in the middle of the sidewalk. She turned onto Forty-Ninth Street where the traffic moved in fits and starts, yellow cabs cutting each other off.
Keep moving. Don’t look back. Lose yourself. Run.
She had no money, knew no one, and had no place to go.
But someone had Malcolm, and she had to figure out a way to get him back.
Click here to purchase
Night’s Deep Hush
,
available now
OTHER BOOKS BY ERIN KELLISON
The Reveler Series
The Shadow Series
The Shadow Kissed Series
Night Kissed (book three - coming soon)
The Shadow Touch Novella Series
Shadow Burn (part four - coming soon)
Hotter On The Edge Anthologies
Anthologies of science fiction romance novellas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erin Kellison is the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author of the Reveler series, as well as the Shadow series and Shadow Kissed series, which share the same world, where dark fantasy meets modern fairy tale. RT calls
Soul Kissed
, “a dark fairy tale with a twist, perfect for readers who love passion with their fantasy.”
DARKSIDER
Copyright © 2014 by Erin Kellison
ISBN: 978-0-9904107-5-1
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