Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds Page 2

  “Are you worried I’m going to knock you out when you’re not looking?” she asked as she strode across the dirt, her boots kicking up clouds of cinnamon dust.

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “You’d deserve it.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I would.”

  And that was that. They were partners again. Everyone got their one time out, their one time to break away from the job and never come back. No one would chase them down if they decided to just quit.

  Coming back meant the next unapproved time off would be in a coffin.

  “That was your one chance, you know,” she said as they stepped into the darker, but not much cooler, shop.

  The place was filled with rare items she’d restored through normal, and inter-dimensional means. Shelves and corners were stacked with antiques and other valuables. Need a bellows for your harmonium or a Tiffany lamp base plate? She’d find it in this world, or cross a few boundaries and find one that was still intact in an alternate dimension.

  The bosses didn’t love the idea of trans-dimensional Dumpster diving, but a girl had to make ends meet between gigs of saving the world.

  “To get away?” He paused to pick up a crystal goblet and ran his thumb over the water-smooth glass. He put it down, then briefly brushed his fingers over the velvet of the case it was settled in. “I know.”

  She followed him, watching how he walked: subtle limp on the right, boots landing just a little too heavily on the floorboards, left arm pressed against his side. He’d been hurt, maybe still was, and he was exhausted. Would the bosses notice? Of course they would, they noticed everything.

  “Where’ve you been, Curious?” she asked after they’d left the antique shop behind and pushed open the door that only unlocked for them.

  “Over the edges,” he said.

  They were through the living room that she rarely used, and finally in the very modern, very well-stocked kitchen.

  The warm, home-and-comfort smell of brewed coffee softened the stark white and chrome of the place. If she’d had a choice, the kitchen wouldn’t look like a laboratory outfitted by Ikea. But this wasn’t so much her home, as an outpost.

  “Not where I’d go to get my head together,” she said.

  He nodded and dragged fingertips across the counter top as he walked to the coffee pot.

  She didn’t blame him for wanting to touch everything. Running off into dimensions that are almost exact duplicates of your world, but never quite right, meant that once you got home, you wanted to hug it, roll in it, and press reality tight against you.

  Hold the people there tightly too.

  “That’s not why I left.” He poured coffee in one white china cup. “Not to get my head together.” He filled a matching cup, retrieved the cream and watched the pure white muddle the darkness as he poured.

  “All right. Why?”

  He turned with the coffees in his hands. “You’ll want to be sitting for this, Still.”

  She rolled her eyes and plunked down in a chrome and white chair next to the chrome and white table.

  He placed her cup on the table in front of her as if afraid to actually touch her yet, then held his cup under his nose and inhaled. His eyes closed and the tension he’d been trying to hide drifted away, leaving his face in the meditative expression of peace.

  If touch in the home dimension was good, food was even better. And sex...well, it was worth coming home for.

  He finally took a drink and made a pleased sound in the back of his throat. When he opened his eyes again, he gave her that smile she’d fallen for too many times, then leaned back against the counter.

  She noted he kept most his weight off his right foot.

  “You remember our last job?” he asked.

  “Hard to forget almost dying.”

  “And the kid there in East London?”

  “Harder to forget the boy with terrors so strong he could have ended this dimension.”

  She said it easy, flat, but it had been the most frightening job of her life. They’d nearly not made it back from fighting the monsters that kid had dreamed up. His terrors had crossed into twelve dimensions before they could stop them, and had done permanent damage to this reality too.

  That earthquake and tsunami? Yeah, that was the East London kid dreamer.

  “I went back to see him.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a little outside protocol.” It was a lot outside of protocol.

  “He started dreaming again.”

  It happened sometimes. They could do certain things to make sure terrors and imaginings didn’t plague people, but occasionally it wasn’t enough. And when that happened, protocol said they had to remove the person from their home reality, drag them out to a dimension so distant, their terrors were weakened and unable to affect any reality.

  They became a name on a missing person report, or sometimes were replaced with a near-dimension version of themselves.

  “Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped.”

  “I didn’t relocate him out across edges.”

  “So you killed him.”

  “No.”

  Her stomach clenched. “What did you do? It’s relocate or kill, Tom. There isn’t any other option.”

  The look on his face said that there was.

  “What did you do to him, Curious?”

  “I made a deal.”

  “With him?”

  “With his terrors.”

  A second or two ticked by while she tried to process that. “What?”

  “I put the kid down into a deep sleep and called them out. Then I told them I wouldn’t destroy them, wouldn’t hunt them if we could come to an understanding.”

  “So you destroyed them.”

  “No. We came to an understanding.”

  Crazy. No one negotiated with imaginaries. No one made deals with monsters.

  Except, apparently, her partner.

  “What deal?”

  “They’d leave the kid. Empty out completely. And take me instead.”

  “And you believed them? Believed the promise of monsters? Why?” She had a hard time keeping her voice down. “Why would you do such a stupid, dangerous thing?”

  “He’s my son.”

  Mary Still closed her mouth and shook her head, trying to make sense of what he was saying. They were partners, yes. They’d had sex. But they’d never admitted they were in love.

  “When?” she said quietly. “He must be six or seven?”

  “He’s six. I met his mother in France, spring that year,” he added.

  Seven years ago. They’d just been assigned this warden outpost that summer, met for the first time at the briefing before taking up their new assignment as partners.

  “How long have you known?”

  He took another drink of coffee, the tension folding the corners of his eyes and drawing lines between his eyebrows. “Figured it out six months ago. When he almost killed us.”

  “Do you want to be in his life?” she asked.

  “His mother married a couple months after we met. He already has a father who thinks he’s his own. I was just her last chance fling.”

  “You know this is bad,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You know we can’t have children. That if we do—”

  “—they’ll become conduits for terrors and imaginings across multi-realities.”

  No wonder the kid was so strong. He had warden blood in him. “He’s a trans-dimensional beacon,” she said. “Every terror in the known realities can find him.”

  “Me,” Curious replied. “Every terror in the known realities can find me now.”

  “Then why haven’t they?”

  “They have.” He finished his coffee. “I have the bruises and broken bones to prove it.”

  “Why haven’t they found you now, here?”

  He twisted, winced when he couldn’t quite reach the counter to rest his cup there. “Well, I haven’t slept in thre
e days, and I haven’t stayed in one reality for more than an hour or two.”

  “So you’re running.”

  “I’m finding an answer to my problem.”

  “What answer?”

  “You.”

  “No,” she said.

  “No? I haven’t even asked you anything yet.”

  “No, I will not kill your son, and no, I will not kill you.”

  He held her gaze. He was good at reading her emotions. It should be loud and clear just how serious she was.

  “Killing me,” he said slowly, “would make this an easy cleanup, an easy ending.”

  “No,” Still said again. “So what’s plan B?”

  “Who says I have a plan B?”

  “Because, Curious, you always have a plan B.”

  “All right. I turn myself in to the bosses, tell them everything.”

  “Who will kill you and the kid just to be safe,” she said. “No. Next. Plan C.”

  He lifted his hands and pressed his thumb knuckles into the inside corner of his eyes. His hands shook. “Plan C,” he said. “I’m open for suggestions.”

  “To begin with, you get some sleep.”

  “No,” he said.

  “And I’ll call Horse.”

  Curious pulled his hands away from his face. “God, no. Horse? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking you need sleep and Horse and I can handle whatever comes crawling out of or across reality while you do it. We’ll take care of it before the bosses show up.”

  “That’s not a solution.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s a short-term solution. Once you get some sleep, we’ll work on a long-term solution.”

  “Horse owes me money,” he grumbled.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him that while he’s saving the world from you. Go.”

  He started off to the bedrooms, and she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the nearest warden in this reality, Robert Horse.

  “Mary Still, it’s been some time,” Horse said in a voice as broad as his shoulders. “You ready to switch out partners and leave Curious behind?”

  “Hi, Horse,” she said. “I need some help. Can you get over to the shop in the next ten minutes or so?”

  Horse was stationed in Idaho, somewhere up near the border with Canada. Distance wasn’t that much of a problem for wardens. After all, they had to locate and get to outbreaks of terrors and crossovers from other dimensions as quickly as possible.

  Luckily, once you knew the differences and variances of other dimensions, it wasn’t difficult to map a route that could get you from any place on earth to another in about fifteen minutes.

  “Should I bring my cross and guns?”

  “Would you leave them behind if I told you to?”

  “No. I’ll be there in ten. You seen Curious lately?”

  “Yeah, that’s my problem.”

  Horse was quiet a second. “He still got a soul?”

  “Yes.”

  She could hear his exhalation of relief.

  “Well, then how bad can it be?”

  “Just come soon, okay?” She thumbed off the phone.

  The sound of the shower turning on told her Curious was going to scrub the grit of other realities off before crawling into bed. Good. That would give her five minutes.

  And five minutes was all she needed.

  Mary picked up the cross she’d left on the table and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. Her gun was strapped against her ribs where she always carried it.

  It was early March, and a Wednesday—not exactly high tourist season—but just in case, she walked back to the shop, turned the sign to “Closed,” locked the door, and dimmed the lights.

  She had a little boy to see.

  Mary Still set her feet and took a deep breath. Walking into other dimensions took some getting used to. Without a lodestone, a person was doomed to be lost, to never quite know if they were headed toward or away from their home reality. She placed the palm of her right hand over the lodestone she wore on a leather thong around her neck, and with her left hand tapped her fingers in the sequence that would trigger the shift in dimension.

  Then she started walking. Right through the wall of her shop that was a wall of an antique store, a gas station, a grocery store, a hospital, then wasn’t even a wall any more, each step taking her miles or hundreds of miles, across hills in some dimensions, rivers in others, and strange bottomless canyons filled with swirling stars.

  She knew the shortcut to London, and took it until she was walking down a street, rain and sudden, biting cold making her wish she’d thought to wear a coat or even long sleeves.

  Brown brick buildings stacked up on either side of her, wooden fences in various states of paint and disrepair soldiering along the alleyway as she headed to the apartment where the East London kid dreamer was not dreaming.

  A tap of her fingers and she sidestepped this reality until she found one where the door was open, then entered the third apartment from the left, top floor, into a cluttered but tidy home.

  She didn’t want to be seen, so she stayed just on the edge of where her home reality and the next met. Dogs and cats and other animals would sense her here, but most humans wouldn’t.

  The East London kid dreamer was in his bedroom, sitting on the floor, surrounded by action figures and cars. He had Curious’s mop of dark hair, but his eyes were brown in a cherubic, freckled face.

  Mary paced a circle around him, looking for the glow that signified someone plagued by the terrors and imaginings. This kid had been practically on fire when she and Curious had found him six months ago caught in the paralysis of nightmares and terrors. But now—nothing.

  He had that slightly elevated aura that all kids under the age of thirteen carried. No one, not even the bosses, would suspect that he was anything more than a normal kid.

  How the hell had Curious pulled that off? You couldn’t undream a person.

  She knelt in front of the boy so she could see his face more clearly.

  He looked up as if he’d heard a sound. And that’s when she saw it. Curious had somehow erased the kid’s ability to even have a nightmare. Oh, he might have a bad dream, but the deep horrors that called terrors and imaginings into the world would simply not be possible.

  She didn’t know where her partner had learned that, but it sure wasn’t in the rule book. Great. If the bosses found out about this—any of it—Curious would be dead. The only good thing to come out of it was that the terrors would never find the kid again.

  “Good luck kiddo,” she whispered.

  His gaze almost settled on her. He smiled and she felt something inside her break. He looked so much like Tom.

  Mary made it back to the shop and into her home dimension before Horse arrived. Curious was out of the shower, so she went down to his bedroom and knocked softly on the door.

  “You awake?”

  “Are there monsters trying to eat your face?” His reply was muffled.

  “No,” she said.

  “There ya go.”

  She stepped into the room. He was lying in bed, under just the top cover, his arm draped over his eyes.

  “I looked in on the kid.”

  He didn’t move his arm. Didn’t say anything for a moment or two. She sat in the chair next to the bed, suddenly tired and wishing she could crawl under the covers with him to hold him against her, solid and real.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I wanted to see how you did it. And I wanted...wanted to see the only kid—in any reality— we can call our own.”

  He swallowed hard, then stretched his other arm out across the bed toward her, his hand open.

  She pressed her palm into his, lacing his fingers. His entire body tightened a little and he exhaled a held breath. She must be the first real person he’d touched in awhile. Maybe in six months.

  “We can’t ever see him again,” she said softly.

  “I know.”

  “He’ll never
know you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Mary. To put you in this mess. To bring it here for you to clean up.”

  “I can handle it.”

  He finally dragged his arm away from his eyes and turned his head to look at her. She’d never seen him so deeply tired. “You shouldn’t have to.”

  “We’re partners, Curious,” she said. “All the way to the end.”

  “If I die...” he started.

  “No,” she said. Then, to the stubborn set of his jaw that told her he wasn’t going to let it go that easily: “You owe me, okay? Secluded tropical beach—real world— private chef, and no work for a week.”

  That got a smile out of him. “Seriously? A week? Do you think I can pull off the impossible?”

  “Yes.”

  The distinctly glass tink of realities being crossed rang out from just beyond the door, interrupting whatever it was Curious had been about to say.

  “Heard you two were having some trouble,” Horse said. “Didn’t expect it to be in the bedroom. Although it’s not that big of a surprise.”

  Curious scowled. Mary gave his hand a squeeze before letting go and standing to face the warden.

  Horse was a tall, rangy man with overly prominent cheekbones and hard edges everywhere else. He wore his long white hair tied back in a single braid beneath a gray cowboy hat that didn’t exactly match his dockers and Mr. Roger’s green zip up sweater. He was anywhere between ninety and a hundred-and-three, which was saying something since the life expectancy of most wardens hovered closer to the fifty marker.

  “Thanks for coming, Horse,” Mary said. “We owe you.”

  That was enough to stop Horse mid-step. “Before I’ve done anything? It must be bad.”

  “It is,” she said. “Curious took on a dreamer’s terrors.”

  Horse laughed. It was loud enough to cover most of the swearing Curious set off into. Mary waited for the old guy to get his breath back.

  “My boy, you are a cracker. Let me get a look at you.” He crossed over to the foot of the bed and stared down at Curious, who had propped up to a sitting position and was glaring at him.

  All the laughter drained from Horse’s face. “Dreamer light. I should turn you in for this, Tom. You too, Mary, for not reporting him.”

  “Help us or leave,” Mary said evenly.