Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

would he keep Maggie calm?
    “They’re really fucking close,” he said. “It’s claustrophobic.”
    “You’re not claustrophobic.” Even in his mind, it sounded like her teeth were gritted.
    Enough of this and he would turn claustrophobic.
    “I was thinking of you,” he lied. “If their proximity bugs you, it’ll funk your shield.”
    “Funk my shield. I don’t recall that technical term from class.” She took a few deep breaths. Her fingers tightened on his. “I’m okay for now. The odor’s not bad.”
    “We’ll drift, then.” He tugged her hand. The shield bulged as they moved, contorting around them. There was an art to maintaining a shield during locomotion. Maggie’s textbook oval lost its artistry but stayed whole.
    “I hate this. They’re pushing at me like a reverse tug-o-war.”
    Everyone had noticed the increase in the wraith numbers in the past couple years. The assumption was that it was due to global overpopulation. He’d locomoted to the coma station a few times to orate with Adi, where the wraiths had clustered in record numbers as well, though not in Maggie numbers. Coma patients like his ex-student Karen attracted them.
    Maggie wasn’t Karen.
    Maggie had no control over this.
    Maggie couldn’t shield longer than ten minutes without holding his hand.
    “If I screwed up and manifested,” she asked him, “would hundreds come through? How many are out there?”
    Great, that meant she was thinking about Karen too. She didn’t mention his former student often. But the rest of them—the sentries—mentioned Karen a lot. They compared. Everyone but his dumb ass had gotten wicked vibes off Karen, and he’d ignored their advice.
    Luckily, nobody got the same vibes off Maggie, despite her difficulties. Otherwise his fellow sentries would have been insisting on a curator, not wanting the East Coast base to be the site of the next Harrisburg.
    “One wraith, a hundred wraiths. Who’s counting?” Zeke wrapped an arm around her, giving her more than his hand to show his support.
    She wasn’t Karen.
    “You’re counting.”
    “Technically, I can’t count them. Too crammed. Can’t see edges. And you’re all over conduit lockdown. You aren’t going to let one through.”
    “But if something happened to me,” she persisted. “If I fell into a coma, I—”
    He cut her off.
    “You’re picking nits. Don’t buy trouble—it costs too much. Hell, there could be no more than thirty of the bastards.” He didn’t believe it, but it was important to keep her spirits up as the weight of their escort beat at her shields. “They might be, I dunno, squooshing on the shield to block our view.”
    In the dimness, he could barely see the mulish set of her chin. “ That sounds deliberate. Current research indicates wraiths have minimal sentience and wouldn’t be smart enough for that.”
    He floated to a halt. “Widen your shield and find out. Stretch it way out, so they can’t cover it.”
    “They cover yours.”
    “Try it anyway.”
    She sniffed. The carrion odor had increased.
    Shit. That meant her shields were about to fail. He’d have to let them. He’d have to give her a chance to reestablish it herself, as wraiths battered her from every angle. She had to know how to keep her conduit lock impassable no matter what. It was the most important thing alucinators learned, with shields being the second.
    If an L1 or L2 could learn conduit locks and shields, they could survive without disrupting the world. They could even barricade themselves out of the dreamsphere and sleep like babies.
    L3 and up? Not so lucky. High levels showed a decrease in stability of many sorts—mental, physical, emotional—if shut out of the sphere for long. They had to visit, preferably daily. So they had to master the skills.
    Maggie glanced up at him. The swirly ground, where the wraith mass didn’t extend, was their main illumination.
    “I’ve got an idea,” she said. The shield fluctuated a little