Page 18 of Shadow Boxed (Shadow Warriors #2)

Chapter fifteen

Aiden had experienced countless whack-a-doodle dreams over the past couple of weeks, so many they were driving him batty. But this one…fuck…this one took the cake.

For one thing, he knew he was dreaming. In previous dreams, he hadn’t realized he was dreaming until he woke up.

But he knew this was a dream, even as he was dreaming it.

He knew the elderly Native American, with the hawkish nose, square chin, and waist-length silver braid was dead.

Fuck…he remembered finding the dude’s body.

His dead body. Shadow Mountain had given the old guy a hell of a ceremonial sendoff too, everyone all lined up in their Sunday best—military style—before carting him off for a private warrior ceremony.

People had grieved. Hell, they were still grieving.

Oh yeah, he knew Benioko was dead. Sure, he’d dreamed of other dead people before—his father, the team brothers he’d lost, the occasional civilian caught in the crossfire. But he hadn’t known they were dead in the dream. And none of them, not one, had scolded him.

So yep, completely whack-a-doodle, this dream.

And like most dreams, this one made absolutely no sense.

He glanced around the lush meadow with its purple and pink wildflowers and the ring of giant trees surrounding it.

They looked like pine and spruce, with the occasional aspens thrown in.

Normal trees. Nothing twisted or gnarled or shrouded in mist. Thank Christ. Just everyday trees surrounding an everyday meadow, absolutely nothing weird about any of them.

Until the dead guy standing in the middle of the meadow opened his mouth and started talking nonsense.

“So let me get this straight,” Aiden drawled. “Your Shadow Warrior killed you so you could live in my dreams and translate his instructions to me?”

Aiden tried to keep the disbelief from his voice. He really did. But fucking hell, he was talking to a dead man. In a dream. And he knew it was a dream. And the shit coming out of their mouths was fucking insane.

“He did not kill me,” Benioko corrected with irritating patience. “He recalled my earthly husk so I could exist in the Tabenetha and facilitate your interaction with the elder gods.”

The Tabenetha? What the fuck was that? What was the crazy dude even talking about? This whole freak show was Wolf’s fault. A consequence of his brother’s insistence that Aiden face his nightmares. Well, he was facing them, and things had turned upside down and inside out.

This was no help at all.

“I am held here because of you,” Benioko continued, reproach creeping across his face and darkening his eyes. “Because you refused to open your mind to your spiritual calling.”

Aiden stiffened. No fucking way. The dude was not pinning his death on his ass. Not even in this freaky dream.

“Hell no. You can’t blame me for your death.” Aiden snapped. “You could have remained the living mouthpiece and passed your god’s instructions on in the real world, as you’ve done for decades. If your claim is true, then your precious Shadow Warrior killed you for no reason.”

Wouldn’t a sleep therapist have a field day with this doozy of a dream? He was arguing with a dead man about who was responsible for his death.

He was pretty sure he was having a lucid dream. A dream in which both the conscious and subconscious worked in tandem. The conscious mind knew you were dreaming, while the subconscious did the dreaming. He’d never experienced this kind of fractured consciousness before, but he’d heard of it.

The sensation of being simultaneously asleep and awake was weird as hell.

“The Shadow Warrior has cause for every action he takes,” Benioko corrected with a patient—I’m talking to a moron—tone in his voice.

“My husk, and the mind it carried, was too weakened by the weight of its years to cross the veil as often as the wanatesa situation required. He needed a younger, stronger Taounaha . One able to cross into the Tabenetha as often as required.” He paused, his face folding into lines of deep reproach.

“He reached out to you, to relieve me of this burden, yet you refused to heed his call.”

Aiden glanced around the sunny little meadow.

There were no white, floaty creatures with elongated mouths and eyes.

Not that he believed the damn things were the elder gods, but it was interesting that Benioko was haunting his current dream, rather than the scream faces.

Hell, the landscape even looked different: sunny and peaceful rather than misty and terrifying.

He turned his attention back to his self-styled interpreter.

“Okay, let’s say that for some brain-rotting reason, I believe you: what exactly are you supposed to be facilitating here?” It seemed like a fair question.

According to all the research he’d done recently on reoccurring nightmares, they were usually brought on by stress, anxiety, and trauma.

Which made sense. God knew the looming apocalypse was one hell of a stressor, and you couldn’t get much more traumatic than watching your best friends blow each other’s heads off.

“Since you refuse to open your mind or your ears,” Benioko announced, a clear reprimand in his voice, “I will impart the Shadow Warrior’s wisdom to you.”

Fuck that attitude. Aiden pivoted and stalked away. He wasn’t gonna stand there while the dude scolded him like a child. Except the instant he turned his back, the dude popped up in front of him again. Another pivot, another Benioko pop up. And again...and again.

“Son of a bitch.” Dizzy from all the spinning, Aiden stopped to glare.

The hawkish face across from him smirked with amused satisfaction. “You cannot run away. Not here. You will face this, whether you believe or not.”

Shit. The asshole was right. If was impossible to avoid the asshole when every path led straight back to him.

Scowling, Aiden ran a hand over his head. “What the hell do you want from me?”

“To listen,” Benioko retorted. “And then inform the Betanee .”

The Betanee? That was Wolf, if he had his Kalikoia terminology right.

“Fine.” Aiden tossed up his hands. “I’m listening. What is so damn important the Shadow Warrior killed you so you could pass the intel onto me?”

This crucial information wouldn’t make any sense anyway. Dreams never did. This urgent warning was probably something as silly as the tomatoes were flying saucers.

Benioko’s expression shifted from satisfied to worried. “The missing bot bomb is now in play. You must tell the others and prevent it from infecting Hokalita .”