Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(159)

He coughed, wincing. “Not injured,="0em">

“Oh, thank God.” She tightened her arms around him again. His lack of response was weird. He was so strange. Not himself at all.

And not happy to see her. Not one little bit.

Fear uncurled inside her, like dark whorls of smoke. “Are you, um, drugged?” she asked, almost hopefully.

“No,” he said.

Well. That was uncharacteristically terse. She smoothed his hair back off his forehead. “My poor baby,” she murmured. “They beat you.” She touched the bruised cheekbone, his split lip with her fingertip.

He flinched away. “Don’t!”

She was alarmed. “Bruno?” Her voice was small.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said thickly. “Did he not tell you?”

“Tell me what?” she asked. “Who? King? He told me all kinds of things. Not many of them were worth knowing.”

He made an impatient gesture. “Quit it with that. What I mean is, did he tell you that I know?”

“Know what?” She was baffled to tears.

“That the game’s up,” he replied. “No need to pretend anymore.”

“Pretend what?” She was yelling. She tried to breathe. Think this through. He turned to look through the doorway, and she saw the blood encrusted in his hair. Understanding dawned with wrenching tenderness. She touched the egg-shaped knot on his skull.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “You have a head injury. Do you have a concussion? Are you nauseous? Let me look at your pupils.”

He batted her hand away. She tried not to feel hurt. After all, he was in pain, injured, addled. “Bruno?” she asked. “What is this?”

His lips were flattened, as if something was hurting him. His face looked so different with that stark mask. Unrecognizable.

“Cut it out,” he said. “I know. So don’t do this.”

Her practical side kicked in. Screw this. They could have this conversation later, after Bruno had gotten a shot of painkillers and a CT scan. “Well, hell. I don’t know what you’ve found, but there’s some stuff I found.” She got to her feet, yanked his hand. “Let me show you.”





Bruno got up, but the world swirled, swung, and he found himself draped over Lily’s shoulder, and she was scrambling to keep her feet beneath herself.

He wrenched away, at the cost of bouncing into the wall. Touching her hurt him. Just looking at her hurt him. Those searching eyes. She was saying something. He couldn’t understand. Sound cut in and out of his head. Something about kids, machines. Babies.

He couldn’t take it in, any more than on her previous visits. She’d been here several times. An angel of mercy at first, and then she morphed, turned seductive and whorish, laughing at what a fool he’d been. Those visits had been interspersed with visits from Rudy, a bloody knife in his hands. And Mamma, wearing her death wounds.

Then his vision would clear, and he would see the room, the floorboards. Feel the bonds cutting into his body.

This new dream-Lily was using a new strategy. She looked more vulnerable, face white, hair tangled. Eyes full of love. She was going for realism this time. Drawing him in, making him want to protect her . . .

You’re my champion.

And whammo, she’d put it to him. Straight to the tender parts.

He wanted her to go away. Either she was a bad dream, or she was a bad reality. But she was such a beautiful bad dream. She could tempt him to stay in the dream world forever. Except that he’d be crazy.

He was probably well into crazy already, though. He stared at Lily, wondering why she didn’t dissolve into smoke, like the others. This dream-Lily was stubborn, like the real one he thought he’d known. She tugged his arm. Wanted him to follow her somewhere.

The memory floated up like a bubble, perfectly formed in every detail. The video footage King had shown him. I love you. Just you. Only you.

The phrase King had taunted him with: You’re my champion.

He remembered how that phrase had functioned on him, when she’d said it to him in the diner. Like a switch flipping on, lighting him up like a torch. He’d have done anything for her. He would have died for her. Still would. He stared at her moving lips, her earnest eyes. Strange, that he was hip to the facts and still felt all the same feelings. He was still tempted to give in to the fiction, though it made no goddamn sense at all to perpetuate it, now that her boss had spilled the beans.

But she was a dream. Hey, dreams didn’t have to make sense.

All he wanted was to go back to that fantasy world where Lily was everything she’d said she was. Where he really had saved her, where she really did love him. Where Lily really did open the door, run to him, and cut his bonds. But any minute, he’d wake up, face flat to the floor.

You’re my champion. She’d used that phrase to reel him in, bend him to her will. Twice. There was no other way King could have known about those exact words. No one had overheard those conversations. The first one in the diner, at four in the morning, at a secluded booth. Even less so the second time, at the cabin, in bed, just himself and Lily.

Those were the facts. He knew what he knew. Even if he hated it. Even if it killed him.

Lily dragged him down the corridor. He wondered if he should be resisting her, just on principle. But why bother? It was all a dream. He might as well go where she took him. See what trash his subconscious mind was littered with. He’d be back on that floor soon enough.