Outlaw (Wolves of Royal Paynes #4) - Kiki Burrelli Page 0,55
"Darling…" Darling? That was a new one from me. I shook off the weird feeling that thought gave me and turned to find Diesel standing by the door. Jazz was just outside, walking in, carrying two steaming bowls of popcorn.
"Diesel, could you—"
Diesel smiled, the expression so full of malice my stomach leaped into my throat. Something bad was going to happen. Something—
Jazz grunted and dropped the bowls. Popcorn flew everywhere, but all eyes were on Jazz's chest, blooming red.
Diesel pulled the knife free of Jazz's chest. As Knox charged inside the room, Diesel caught him, bracing his palm against Knox's forehead as he brought the knife—still covered with Jazz's blood—across his throat.
Knox dropped the same moment Storri cried out for his mate, but Faust was still upstairs. Knox's and Jazz's bodies lay in crumpled heaps, spilling twin pools of red that Diesel carelessly stomped, like a child through puddles, to get to Storri.
I ran like a coward out the door.
If this was real, I never would've been able to leave my brothers. Storri had been screaming in terror, but I kept running until his screams grew faint.
No. This wasn't Diesel. This wasn't him. He'd never… I was dreaming, but these weren't my thoughts.
If this wasn't my dream, and I was sleeping, that meant one thing. I needed to wake up. I'd never learned that skill before—waking up after realizing you were sleeping. I'd always had my wraiths to—
My wraiths!
They weren't here, in dreamland, but they knew what was in my head. Maybe, if I screamed for them, they could hear me. "Wraiths! Please wake me up! Wraiths! Wraiths! Can you hear me?"
I screamed so loud my throat burned, but I didn't stop. This wasn't real pain; this wasn't real.
"Quinlan!" Diesel roared, stomping through the grass, holding a knife covered in blood that dripped down the handle. "I'll give you something to scream about!"
Pierce needed to get some new material. If I hadn't already caught on, I—
My eyes popped open, and I was immediately aware of something covering my face. I scratched at it, kicking wildly until I realized it was one of my wraiths wrapped around my nose and mouth, preventing me from taking a breath. Though my lungs screamed for air, I settled, trusting my wraiths not to kill me. The other returned, swollen like a ball that covered my head—replacing the wraith already there.
Air baaad.
Beside me, Diesel grunted, his eyes closed. I pushed his shoulder, as able to rouse him as I was to turn him over.
"Wake him up!" The air felt too thick inside my wraith air bubble. My throat constricted, fooling my mind into believing there wasn't enough air, that something was wrong with it—I needed to calm down. The air wasn't thick—that was my anxiety—but it was limited.
Nooo. The wraiths flashed from black to silver like police lights in an old movie.
"Why can't he wake up?"
Stuuck.
He was stuck dreaming? Maybe whatever Pierce used to plant nightmares kept him asleep as well? Where was Pierce? This was his doing, no question about it.
Outsiiide.
I told myself it wasn't cowardice but practicality that had me asking my next question. "Can you just go knock him out or something?"
They flashed again, the intensity rising from police light to strobe.
Pierce only had a few tricks, and he reused the same material, but I couldn't discount his effectiveness. I could sense the other nephilim were in their rooms, but knew somehow that they were all unconscious, the same as Diesel. If I hadn't had years of recognizing my nightmares, I'd probably be in the same state. "What about the babies?" I asked, bending down to pick up my whip.
Neeeeed to huuuurry.
That wasn't the answer I'd hoped for.
I ran over my options. If I couldn't wake Diesel up—and I could only assume the wraiths knew it would scramble his brain or something—then I had to handle the threat on my own. And with Pierce on pack lands somewhere, I couldn't wait for the gas to clear and hope Pierce wouldn't have moved on to the next stage in his attack by then. I squeezed the familiar handle, holding the length in a coil that would keep it from dragging. "Where outside?"
The wraiths flashed a muted silver, indicating they weren't fans of the plan, but they escorted me down the unusually dark hallway anyway.
I knew Knox had installed motion-activated nightlights in his unending mother-henning, but there wasn't a single light on the entire way to the stairs.