Lay Me Down by Erin Kellison Read Free Book Online

Sound, too, had become muted, the wail of the dust storm seemingly distant while it buffeted him from all sides. His nose and throat burned with each breath. Time had no meaning. He was beyond exhausted, but collapse meant death.
    One of them , those creatures, was near. He’d discovered he could sense them after his sight had darkened. They were cold, so he was cold when they ventured close. He dared not move. Stillness was his only hope. He prayed the wind would hide him, because if the creatures found him, they would tear him apart.
    He’d failed his father, whom Graeme had surely killed by now. The Chimera had promised to help, but they’d also promised to come back for Vince out in the Scrape, and they hadn’t succeeded so far.
    The cold intensified, the creature coming closer.
    Vince held his breath, he willed his heart to a slow thud, and he waited.
    Please, God, let it pass me by.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    “William Kerry,” Steve said, “attended a Rêve seven days ago put on by an outfit called Silver Sunrise that caters to retirees.”
    The report was brief, but he didn’t need much detail to paint the picture. He wanted just enough to make sure that Maisie understood what she’d been involved in, and what her holding out meant. Just about anyone else he could crack like a nut, but she was naturally strong, and at the moment too guarded.
    Thus far, she’d only conceded enough to provide the real-life names and dreams of people like Graeme, in the middle of the chain. Not the one at the end, to whom the old man was to be delivered.
    Steve cursed himself for not pressing her on it earlier. Instinct had urged him to get beyond Graeme, but he’d wanted to give Maisie time to settle into the idea of Chimera and to work out on her own whether or not she wanted to join. The delay was his mistake, not hers.
    He’d had no idea someone was suffering, and neither had she.
    Steve had reinitiated the Silver Sunrise Rêve—unsurprised that it hadn’t been used since William went missing. It was a flying dream with staggering landscapes to rush and dive over. A VR game could have simulated the same thing, but no game could provide, in body, the sense of power, youth, and visceral experience that a dream could.
    In addition to Maisie, three other people hovered in the blue air: Jordan, her sister, who Steve hoped might convince her to talk; Malcolm Rook, Agora marshal and the man who’d recruited Jordan; and Harlen Fawkes, another marshal who’d been assigned as backup. All three Chimera had been searching the Scrape for Vince Blackman. His father’s fate was now less certain, considering what had happened to this old man. Had Graeme denied knowledge of Raymond because he was already dead? Steve hoped not.
    At evenly spaced intervals throughout the sky, an Agora column speared even higher into space. The columns were in every dream, a security measure, though usually they weren’t apparent unless the dreamer looked for one. Agora columns were a promise of safety—or rather, they were supposed to be. They hadn’t worked for the old man.
    “William Kerry came here to fly,” Steve said, “but he never woke up. Since he was already in a nursing home, his caretakers thought he had slipped into a coma due to physical causes.”
    “See, right there,” Marshal Fawkes said. “ Every absence has to be reported. Silver Sunrise was protecting its reputation and its revenue stream, not the people who buy their dreams. This guy just wanted to get out of his wheelchair for a night. His family paid a mint for him to do so. He ended up buried—” Fawkes shot Maisie a look “—under a tree.”
    “There’s not much left of his path to track,” Rook said. “It’s been too long.”
    Rook’s duties as a Chimera usually took him out of Rêve, following sadists who preyed on dreamers, but yes, William Kerry’s path would have been dispersed by the dreamwaters by now.
    “I still don’t get what happened,” Jordan