“Leal,” he says with a hint of a smile. “You startled me, old friend.” He lowers the bow and turns his back to the newcomer. “I come here when I feel unsettled. It’s almost—”
The gray-haired dude pushes him over the cliff, and we’re back in the meeting room before the elf strikes the rocks.
Kain looks thoughtful. “I don’t know about this. Why would Leal kill his closest ally?”
Why indeed? “Maybe I could go into his dream to find out?”
Kain sighs and turns a few pages in his folder. There’s a picture of a balding man in a white coat, a dove sitting on his shoulder as if he were a pirate and there were a parrot shortage.
“I don’t mean to disrespect the dead,” Felix says, “but he totally looks like Dr. Wily from the Mega Man games.”
Or any mad scientist, for that matter.
“The next image is disturbing,” Kain says. “Take a deep breath.”
I do as he suggests, and he turns the page.
Puck. The slab of meat in the photo is barely recognizable as a man.
Felix makes a strange wheezing sound. Did he just faint?
I drag my gaze away from the horrible image. “What could do that?” I ask Kain.
“The doves,” he says.
I blink at him uncomprehendingly.
“I think he means like in the Alfred Hitchcock movie,” Felix says in a thin voice. I guess he didn’t faint, after all. “You know, The Birds?”
Kain turns to Hekima. “Can you show her a simulation?”
Before I can say thanks but no thanks, I see an intact Leal standing in a lab filled with cages of white birds. Without warning, the doves become agitated. One manages to break through the cage, followed by another and another.
Leal looks at the freed birds with no fear. “What spooked you, dears?” he asks in a raspy voice.
This is when a dove dives and pecks him in the eye.
He screams, clutching his eye, but another bird is already diving for his face again. More doves leave their cages and join the attacking horde (or dule, as a group of doves is called). Some of them hurt themselves in the process, but that doesn’t seem to stop them.
“Enough!” I snap. “I get it.”
Instantly, the blood and gore are replaced by the meeting room.
“Sorry,” Hekima says, “I didn’t—”
“It’s fine.” I force a smile, ignoring the nausea twisting my stomach. “I did need to know what happened.”
Kain and Hekima wait as I even out my breathing. And hey, a benefit of not having eaten in a day is that I can’t puke—one of my least favorite activities.
“Is there someone on the Council who can control animals?” I ask when my voice is steady enough. “On Gomorrah, we call people who can do that—”
“Gemma.” Kain flips a page in the folder.
A long-haired beauty stares at me from the photo. She’s dressed in all leather and stands on high heels.
“This one looks like Bayonetta,” Felix says, his voice back to normal. “She’s this kickass video game witch who—”
Kain flips to the next page, and Felix makes a gagging sound. My stomach roils too. Though arguably not as bad as the prior image, it’s still pretty gruesome.
Someone or something literally ripped this woman in half.
“I don’t want to see a recreation of this,” I tell Hekima before he can do his thing. “It’s self-explanatory. Someone very strong pulled her in two different directions.”
“Indeed,” Kain says. “Gemma’s kind are fragile, so unfortunately, we have many Cognizant on the Council with enough strength to do that.”
Well, this is going to be fun. “Do you have any idea how any of this ties together?” I ask. Maybe if they—
Kain slams the folder shut. “That’s what you’re here to find out.”
Right, okay. Lucky me. “Did the bird guy—”
“Leal,” Kain corrects.
“Right. Did Leal have a grievance with the last lady—”
“Gemma,” Kain provides.
“Yes, Gemma. Did Leal—”
“Leal only had one friend—Ryan, the elf,” Hekima says, his grandfatherly features wreathed in pity. “Nobody on the Council liked him much, except maybe Kain and the other vampires.”
“Oh?”
“I’d go as far as to say I considered Leal a friend,” Kain says. “Or at least an ally.”
“But why does everyone else not like the guy?” I resist the temptation to open the folder and look at the man in question.
“His powers,” Kain says. With a sharp-edged smile, he adds, “He was a dreamwalker.”
Another dreamwalker? I glare at Kain. “Why are you only telling me about that now?”
The vampire shrugs. “When was I supposed to tell you? Rumor has it, he had blackmail material on all the other members of the Council. They thought he’d gathered it in their dreams.”
The ache in my temples intensifies. “So you’re telling me he might’ve been killed for snooping around people’s dreams?”
“It’s feasible,” Hekima says gently.
I take a deep breath and try not to look at Pom, who’s rapidly turning black on my wrist. “But that’s exactly what you’re asking me to do. What’s to stop them from wanting to kill me?”
Kain waves dismissively. “You should worry about the murderer. That’s who’ll really want to kill you—if you’re any good.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel so much better.”
Kain smirks. “If I were you, I’d do my best not to find any compromising information inside the Councilors’ heads.”
I cup my hands over my eyes, the enormity of the task hitting me like a punch to the face.
“Why don’t you do your thing with those Council members who have more reason to be under suspicion?” Hekima suggests. “Anyone strong.”
I lower my hands. “Sure, I’ll start with the ones who can rip me in half. I feel safer already.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Kain says. “Still, I want you to set up a dream link to everyone on the Council. Even me.”
I take another breath, trying to think like the detective I’m not. “This Leal, did he leave any notes? As you said, he knew secrets about the Council. Maybe he wrote them down somewhere.”
And maybe, just maybe, he also wrote something about the art of dreamwalking itself. I’ve never met any dreamwalkers besides Mom—we’re pretty scarce on Gomorrah—and between her diligently avoiding the topic of our abilities and the fact that I never received any formal training in how to use my powers, there’s a lot I don’t know about my own kind.
“I’ll take you to his lab,” Kain says, his expression unreadable.
Hekima withdraws his illusion, and the dreary cell room comes back—as does the stench.
“Let me know if I can help any further,” Hekima tells Kain. “And Bailey, if you need to know anything about the history of the Council or anything else, I’m here for you.”
Felix chuckles. “Good old Hekima. He’ll look for any excuse to run an Orientation.”