He whirled on her. “Your rights ended the moment the Nix reported you. You are less than nothing to these people. A mosquito to be squashed. The sooner you accept that, the better.”
Marley found herself edging back, putting both double beds between them.
“Sit down,” he snarled, turning away to wear further holes in the thin carpet.
Marley didn’t move. Heart thundering, she considered that pushing him might not have been the smartest thing she’d ever done. Whatever temporary intimacy being on the run had fostered was an illusion. She didn’t know this man.
He caught sight of her on the return lap and froze, his face spasming with frustrated apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” With visible effort, he reined in his temper, softened his voice. “My qua
rrel is not with you. Sit. Please. I’ll explain what I can.”
She eased onto the bed but didn’t relax.
“There is a whole other world existing around us, in the shadows, in plain sight. A society of people who aren’t…human.”
“Monsters,” she said. Something niggled and pinched in her brain, a thought cut off before it could bloom.
“Some,” he conceded. “But not all. Not even most. The majority of them want what anyone wants—just to go on and live their lives uninterrupted. And for that to work, the general public can’t know they exist. It is the highest law in the Mirus world.”
“Mirus?”
“It’s the collective term for the paranormal races. And not a word you should ever utter in front of other ears.”
“Why?”
“Because by decree of the Council of Races, the punishment for the hapless human who happens to stumble across that world is execution. No trial. No questions. Death. It’s an imperfect system, one that’s been in place for centuries to protect the races from the genocide that would undoubtedly result if the human world at large knew they existed. Certainly some have slipped through the cracks over time. You weren’t one of those lucky ones. The Hunter who’s after you works for them.”
“The punishment is only for the human, not the idiot who got seen?” Marley thought of the sheepish expression on the Nix’s face when he’d seen her.
“Depends on who the idiot is and how bad the breach was. But generally, the Council considers humans expendable. They outnumber the Mirus population by a thousand to one.”
“Oh right, being outnumbered is totally a reasonable excuse for unquestioning extermination.”
“Now you understand my frustration.”
“What the hell do they think I’m going to do with this information? I saw a dude come out of a fountain like something from X-men. If I told anybody what I saw, I’d be rapidly locked up and put on crazy pills. No one would believe me. How does that make me a credible threat?”
“It’s not what you specifically would do with the information. It’s what someone, somewhere could do. There are groups in the human world who wouldn’t think twice about locking up Mirus races, using them as lab rats to see what makes them tick. Military, private sector scientists. Maybe those who would be taken seriously by those groups are few and far between, but the Council makes no distinction and isn’t willing to take the risk. So those humans reported are set to be exterminated.”
“And that’s who that guy at my apartment was? A Hunter?”
“He wasn’t like any Hunter I’ve ever seen. I’m good, but I’m not that good. I shouldn’t have been able to overpower him so easily.”
Marley wondered if the hand he rubbed along his bad leg was intentional or instinctive.
“If he wasn’t a Hunter, who was he?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing everything we’re up against.”
“This is what you do? Deal with this Mirus world? Like some kind of paranormal CIA?”
“Something like that. That’s one area I won’t compromise. The less you know, the better.”
“Okay, fine.” She took a breath, let it out slow. “So, to sum up: Hamlet was right and there are more things in heaven and earth. I found out about it, and now their powers that be want me dead and have dispatched some kind of supernatural assassin, who may or may not have anything to do with the dude who magically showed up in my apartment. None of that explains why you won’t let me sleep.”
“Because the real Hunter won’t be able to readily track you from your apartment, so his next step will be to engage a Dream Walker. They’re…essentially, a special kind of psychic. The Hunter can provide the details of what it is the target has seen, and the Dream Walker can monitor for exactly that. Most people dream of whatever it is they saw. And once the Dream Walker catches wind of it, so to speak, he can track the location of the dreamer, pass it on to the Hunter.”
Marley stared at him. “Please tell me you have a plan, because if you don’t let me sleep at some point, they won’t have to kill me. I’ll just die of exhaustion.”