Children Of Fiends Read Free Page A

then held him tight. “I’m sorry. That’s very hard.”
    “But for the best. Until now, I never expected to get a reprieve.”
    “I wouldn’t hold your breath. All the experts, including myself, agree that I am not contagious, but that hasn’t persuaded the politicians to let me roam. No amount of science seems to overcome their fear.”
    “But MacAfee-”
    “MacAfee would have told you anything to get you to go on this mission.”
    He harrumphed and found her mouth, kissing her gently for a long time until reality tapped him on the shoulder with a wisp of Gretel’s mind probing about. Dean reached for his helmet, but Eliza stopped him, saying, “She’s dreaming.”
    “That’s worse.”
    “No. You can stop it. You just –” She tensed. “And here’s Hansel. They dream as one. They often think as one. It’s bizarre.”
    “Again, worse.” Dean was feeling himself being pulled into a strange landscape filled with light. A perfect star filled night in a jungle valley at the edge of a vast lake, and everything was dark but also lit from within. If not for a terrible foreboding, he would have found it beautiful. And then Eliza was there, her mind mixing with his even as they still held each other. For the briefest of moments they dropped their guard and in their minds anyway, they were making love. She moaned both in the room and in the dream. Dean was stunned by the reality of it. That this was playing out parallel to the children’s subconscious quickly snapped them apart, leaving them back at the edge of the ominous lake – where death, sharp, merciless death waited. Eliza, still trying to shake off the passion, despite the fear that was creeping into both of them said, “This is how you stop it.” Like an echo, the mental equivalent of the word NO shot out from her. It was a scolding tone and like a vapor being sucked back into the bottle, the children where gone.  
    Dean and Eliza’s sense refocused on the environment around them: the rocking of the train car, the click clack of the wheels rolling over the tracks. She let her fingernails gently drag along his hip, whispering, “See. No need for a helmet.” She let his hands explore her until it became too intense, her hips thrusting of their own accord. She stopped his fingers as they slid below her panty line, holding his wrists. “Anyway, I promise if the children’s minds wander again, I’ll be there to protect you.”
    He smiled at the notion of this beautiful petite woman protecting him, and then he remembered her heroics back on the Ginger Girl. Without trying to sound condescending, he said, “Okay,” and pulled his hands up to her waist, acknowledging the need to slow down. “The children,” he nodded toward where the pucks slept and then looked down at the narrow space between himself and Eliza, “Can they sense us doing any of this in their sleep?”
    She unconsciously ran her fingers up and down his chest. “I don’t think so. I’ve experimented with interacting with their dreams. For whatever reason, they didn’t actually invade my thoughts. I was more of an observer that they only vaguely remembered when they woke up. Kind of a reverse of what happens when they are conscious. She paused and held her lips close to his, cupping his cheek, A moment ago you were in the dream, the jungle, and we were... you know...”
    He kissed her, breathing her in. “Oh, I know.”
    She sighed and directed his hand away from her breasts. “That was unprecedented. Until today, I’ve only share minds with the children. Something changed when the four of us were connected upstairs. That jungle. That place. It was too real.” She pulled away from him with a worried look on her face. “They’ve never been to a jungle. They have never seen videos of a jungle.”
    “Maybe in a book?”
    “Nope. Not really. Not with anything like the detail in that dream.”
    He brushed some fallen hair out of her face. “Ever the scientist.” He kissed